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Sa eR ak ncaa 


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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2007 with funding from 
Microsoft Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/disenchanteddeseOOlotiiala 











DISENCHANTED 


Sie 
ech y 
TR, 


DISENCHANTED 
(DESENCHANTEES) 


BY 


Pie RE LOT! 


TRANSLATED BY 


SOLARA BELL 


Nets Bork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Lrp. 
1906 


All rights reserved 


CopyriGHT, 1906, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1906. 
Reprinted November, 1906. 


Norwood Press 
J. 8. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 


Tuis is a purely imaginary tale. Any endeavour 
to find real names for Djenan, Zeyneb, Melek, or 
André would be waste of time, for they never 
existed. 

The only real thing in it is the high level of 
culture now prevailing in the harems of Turkey, 
and the suffering which comes of it. 

This suffering, more striking perhaps to my 
eyes as a foreigner, is already an anxiety to my 
dear friends the Turks, and they would fain 
diminish it. 

I, of course, do not pretend to have discovered 
the remedy which profound thinkers, there on the 
spot, are still seeking. But I, like them, feel sure 
that there is one, and that it will be found; for 
the wonderful Prophet of Islam, who was above 
all else compact of light and charity, cannot have 
desired that the rules he dictated of old should 
become in the lapse of time a cause of suffering. 


PIERRE LOTI. 


ory s} cpr gm 63 
Ko Fee Us ee 





I 


ANDRE Luéry, a well-known romance writer, was 
wearily opening his letters one cheerless spring 
morning in a little house on the shore of the Bay 
of Biscay, in which his latest whim had held him, 
more or less settled, since the previous winter. 

‘So many letters this morning,’ he sighed. ‘Too 
many letters !’ 

To be sure, on the days when the postman 
brought him fewer he was no better pleased, 
suddenly fancying himself isolated in the world. 
Letters from women for the most part, some signed, 
others not, breathing the incense of delicate intel- 
lectual adoration of the author. Almost all began 
in the same strain: ‘You will be much surprised, 
Monsieur, to see the writing of a woman who is 
unknown to you André always smiled at 
this opening phrase; surprised! oh no; he had 
long ceased to be surprised. And then each new 
correspondent, generally believing herself to be 
the only woman in the world bold enough to 
take such a step, never failed to add: ‘My soul is 
the younger sister of yours; no one, I can con- 
fidently assure you, has ever so fully understood 


you as |.’ And at this André did not smile, in 
B I 





2 DISENCHANTED I 


spite of the stale repetition of the assurance; on the 
contrary, he was touched. And besides, the con- 
sciousness of his power over so many beings, widely 
scattered and for ever remote from him, the con- 
sciousness of a certain responsibility for their 
mental evolution, often gave him pause. 

Among these letters, too, there were some so 
spontaneous, so trusting, such earnest cries for 
help, sent out, as it were, to an elder brother who 
could not fail to hear and pity! And those André 
Lhéry would put away — after tossing the pre- 
tentious and commonplace effusions into the 
paper-basket — would keep, in the firm intention 
of replying to them. But generally, alas! time 
was lacking, and the poor letters grew into a pile, 
drowned ere long under the tide of their successors, 
and finally quite forgotten. 

Among the letters this morning was one with 
a Turkish stamp, and a post-mark showing in clear 
definition the word which always brought a thrill 
to André: ‘Stamboul.’ 

Stamboul! what powers of evocation lay in 
the mere name! Before tearing open this letter, 
which might in itself be utterly indifferent, 
André paused, suddenly thrilled by the emotion 
— the same, and of a kind essentially impossible 
to put into words, as he had always experienced 
whenever Stamboul was unexpectedly brought 
before him from the depths of his memory 
after many days of oblivion. And again, as 
often already in dreams, a phantom city rose 
before his eyes which had seen all the world and 
gazed at its infinite variety — the city of minarets 


1 DISENCHANTED 3 


and domes, majestic and unique, unrivalled still 
even in its irredeemable decay, standing out high 
against the sky, with the blue waters of the sea of 
Marmora circling the horizon. 

About fifteen years since there had been among 
his correspondents a few of the idle fair in Turkish 
harems; some had been vexed with him, while 
others had remorsefully delighted in him, for 
having told, in one of the books of his earliest 
youth, the story of his adventures with one of 
their humbler sisters. They clandestinely sent 
him confidential pages in French, incorrect but 
often quite adorable; and then, after the exchange 
of a few letters, they lapsed into silence and 
inscrutable mystery, dismayed at the thought 
of what they had dared, as though it were a 
deadly sin. 

At last he tore the envelope stamped in that 
dear beyond — and the contents made him at first 
shrug his shoulders: No, really, this lady was 
certainly playing with him. Her language was 
too modern, her French too perfect and easy. It 
was all very well to quote the Koran, to sign 
herself Zaideh Hanum, to beg for an answer by 
return of post, Poste-restante, with as many pre- 
cautions as a Red Indian on the warpath; she could 
only be a traveller visiting Constantinople, or the 
wife of some attaché — who could tell ? or, perhaps, 
some Levantine educated in Paris. 

And yet the letter had a charm which was 
irresistible, for André, almost in spite of himself, 
answered it at once. Indeed, he could not but 
show his thorough knowledge of the modern world 


4 DISENCHANTED I 


and say, with all due courtesy of course: ‘You, 
a Turkish lady! Nay, you cannot take me in!’ 

The charm of the letter was in fact indisputable, 
in spite of its improbability. Until the morrow, 
when he naturally ceased to think about it, André 
had a vague feeling that this was the beginning of 
something in his life, of something which would 
lead him on — on to sweetness, danger, and sorrow. 

And it was, besides, like a call from Turkey to the 
man who of yore had loved it so well, but who had 
never gone back. The Biscay sea, on that doubt- 
ful April day, under the still wintry light, suddenly 
revealed itself tohis sight as intolerably melancholy; 
a dim green sea, with the long rollers of almost 
unceasing surge, a vast, gaping void open to an 
infinite distance, at once alluring and appalling. 
How tenderer far was the sea of Marmora as he 
saw it in remembrance, how much more soothing 
and lulling, with the mystery of Islam on its em- 
bracing shores. The Basque country, which had 
so often captivated him, no longer seemed worth 
lingering in. The spirit of the past, which he had 
formerly imagined was surviving yet in the 
Pyrenean highlands and the rugged hamlets near 
at hand, nay, even below his window here in the 
ancient city of Fuentarabia, notwithstanding the 
invasion of impertinent villas —the old Basque 
spirit — no, to-day he could no longer discern it. 
But there — far away — in Stamboul — how much 
more of the past still lived, of the primal human 
dream, lingering in the shade of the great mosques, 
in the oppressive silence of the streets, and in the 
widely pervading region of graveyards, where tiny 


I DISENCHANTED 5 


lamps with a thin yellow gleam are lighted up at 
night by thousands for the souls of the dead. Ah! 
those two opposite shores! Europe and Asia, dis- 
playing to each other’s eyes minarets and palaces 
along the banks of the Bosphorus, under constantly 
htt aspects in the play of Eastern light and 
shade! After the magic of the Levant what could 
be more dismal, more repellent, than this Atlantic 
gulf? Why did he stay here instead of going 
there? How preposterous to waste the numbered 
days of life, when over there lay a land of airy 
enchantment, and the sad delicious intoxication 
which takes no note of the flight of time. 

Still, it was here, on the shore of this colourless 
bay thrashed by the gales and by the tides of ocean, 
that his eyes had opened to the spectacle of the 
world, that consciousness had been given to him 
for a few fugitive years; hence, in spite of all, 
he passionately loved the things he belonged to, 
and he knew that he would miss them when he 
was away from them. 

And so, on this April morning André Lhéry 
was once more alive to the incurable anguish of 
having scattered himself over many lands, of having 
been a wanderer over the whole earth, attaching 
himself to more than one place by his heart strings. 
_ Dear Heaven! why must he now be so bound to 
two native lands: this, of his birth, and that other, 
his oriental home. 


II 


Tue April sun, in that same April but a week 
later, fell, subdued by blinds and muslin curtains, 
into the room of a sleeping girl. The morning 
sun, bringing with it, even through curtains, 
shutters, and latticed screens, the ephemeral glad- 
ness, the perennial delusion of earthly renewal 
which, ever since the world began, has always 
ensnared the soul, complicated or simple, of 
every living creature — the soul of man, the soul 
of beasts, the tiny soul of piping birds. 

Outside, the flutter and twitter of newly 
arrived swallows could be heard, and the hollow 
thud of a tambourine beaten to an Eastern 
thythm. Now and again a sound as of some 
monstrous, bellowing beast rent the air: the 
voice of the hurrying liners, the hoot of the 
steam-sirens, revealing the existence of a harbour 
somewhere near, a great harbour in frenzied stir; 
but these cries of the ships sounded very remote 
and came up from below, and this gave a sense 
of loftiness and peace, as of a hill-top far above 
the sea. 

The room into which the sun shone on the 
sleeping girl was elegant and white; very modern, 
furnished with pretentious simplicity and the 


Il DISENCHANTED 7 


affectation of archaic taste, which at that date 
(1901) represented one of the latest refinements 
of French decadence, and was styled l’art nouveau. 
In a bed enamelled white — on which flowers were 
vaguely sketched with a mixture of primitive art- 
lessness and Japanese freedom, by the hand of 
some fashionable London or Paris decorator — 
the girl was sleeping quietly; a very small face 
in the midst of a dishevelled tumble of fair hair, 
an exquisitely oval face, so perfect that it might 
have been modelled in wax, really too perfect to 
seem quite real; a small nose with nostrils almost 
too delicate and the faintest aquiline curve; large 
Madonna-like eyes, and very long eyebrows, curved 
down towards the temples like those of our Lady 
of Sorrows. Rather too much lace, perhaps, frilled 
the sheets and pillow-cases; too many sparkling 
rings were on the slender hands that lay lightly 
on the satin coverlet; too much magnificence, as 
we should think, for a child so young; but for 
that, everything about her was quite in harmony 
with the latest ideas of Western luxury. But 
there were iron bars to the windows, and besides 
these the chequered wooden screens — closely 
fastened, never to be opened — which gave a 
sense of restraint to all this elegance, the oppression 
almost of a prison. 

In spite of the brilliant sunshine and the glad 
excitement of the swallows outside, the girl slept 
on late, with the heavy torpor that suddenly falls 
after a sleepless night, and there were dark lines 
under her eyes, as though she had yesterday shed 
many tears. 


8 DISENCHANTED 8 


On a small, white-enamelled writing-table a 
forgotten taper was still burning, amid a litter of 
written papers and finished letters in envelopes 
with a gilt monogram. ‘There was music-paper 
too, on which notes were dotted down as in the 
fever of composition. Some books lay about, 
with fragile Dresden china ornaments; the last 
poems of the Comtesse de Noailles, side by side 
with those of Baudelaire and Verlaine, Kant’s 
Philosophy with Nietzsche’s. Evidently there 
was no mother here to weed the reading, and 
moderate the over-heating of this maiden brain. 

And strange indeed in this room, where any 
spoilt and petted Parisienne would have found 
herself at home, a text in Arabic characters hung 
in the very place where, with us, the Crucifix 
might still be suspended; words embroidered in 
gold thread on bright green velvet, a passage 
from the book of Mahomet, the letters flourished 
and interlaced with antique and elaborate elegance. 

The more excited chirping of two swallows, 
both at once, as they boldly clung to the very 
sill of the window, suddenly made the large 
eyes half-open in the small face — so small and 
infantine in its lines; eyes with a large greenish 
brown iris, at first seeming to crave mercy from 
life, to implore reality to come and quickly drive 
out some intolerable dream. 

But reality and the hideous dream were 
apparently too intimately one, for the eyes grew 
darker and sadder as thought and memory came 
back; and they settled altogether into glooim, as 
if hopelessly resigned to the inevitable, when they 


n DISENCHANTED 9 


fell on certain objects which brought irresistible 
evidence to her mind—a diadem sparkling in an 
open jewel-case, and spread out on chairs a white 
silk dress, a wedding dress, with orange flowers 
down the hem of the long train. 

Like a gale of wind, and without knocking, a 
woman rushed into the room, thin, with eager, 
disappointed eyes, in a black dress and a shady 
black hat, elegantly simple, severe, yet with just 
a hint of extravagance. She was almost an old 
maid, but not quite —a governess as might be 
guessed, very highly educated and of a good but 
impoverished family. 

‘I have it! We have it, dear child!’ she said 
in French, showing with childish triumph an 
unopened letter which she had just brought from 
the poste-restante. 

And the little princess in bed replied in the 
same language without the slightest foreign accent: 

“Not really !’ 

“Yes, yes, really. Who should it be from, 
child, but from him? Is this envelope addressed 
to Zaideh Hanum, or is it not? Well, then. Oh, 
if you have given the same password to others — 
then indeed!’ 

“You know I have not 

“Well, then, you see 

The girl was sitting up in bed, her eyes now 
very wide open and a faint flush in her cheeks — 
like a child who has been very unhappy and to 
whom such a wonderful toy has been given that 
for the moment all else is forgotten. The toy 
was the letter; she turned it about in her hands, 








10 DISENCHANTED Il 


fingering it hungrily, and yet afraid, as if it were 
a crime only to touch it. And then, just as she 
was about to tear the envelope, she paused to say 
in a coaxing tone: 

“Dear Mademoiselle, sweet Mademoiselle, do 
not be vexed by my whim, but I want to be quite 
alone when I read it.’ 

‘Certainly, of all odd little creatures there is 
none more odd than you, my darling. But you 
will let me see it afterwards, all the same? ‘That 
is the least I deserve, it seems to me. Well, well! 
I will go to take off my hat and veil, and will 
come back.’ 

An odd little being no doubt, and, moreover, 
curiously coy, for she now felt that the pro- 
prieties necessitated her rising and putting on 
some clothes and covering her hair, before she 
could open a man’s letter, for the first time in 
her life. So hastily slipping on a light blue 
morning wrapper, made in the Rue de la Paix 
by the right maker, and covering her fair head 
in a gauze veil of old Circassian embroidery, with 
trembling hands she broke the seal. 

A very short letter; ten very simple lines, 
with a touch of the unexpected that made her 
smile in spite of her disappointment at finding 
nothing more confidential, more fraught with 
meaning —a polite and friendly response, and 
thanks .which betrayed some weariness; that 
was all. 

But at any rate there was his signature, very 
legible, very real — André Lhéry. ‘This name, in 
' his own hand, went to her brain like a fit of 


Il DISENCHANTED ri 


giddiness. And just as he, in the far West, on 
receiving the letter with the Stamboul post-mark, 
had felt as if something were beginning, so she 
here had a presentiment of some indefinable 
delight and disaster as the outcome of his an- 
swer, arriving on such a day —the eve of the 
great event of her whole life. This man, who 
had for so long reigned supreme in her dreams, 
this man, as far sundered from her, as inaccessible 
as if they were the inhabitants of different planets, 
had this morning really come into her life, by the 
mere fact of these few lines written and signed by 
him for her. 

Never had she so keenly felt herself imprisoned, 
and rebellious, and longing for freedom, and 
space, and flight into the unknown world. It 
was but a step to the window where she was wont 
to rest on her elbows and gaze out; but no, 
there were the carved lattices, the iron bars, which 
exasperated her. She turned away towards a door 
that stood ajar — kicking the train of the wedding- 
gown out of her way, where it lay on the hand- 
some carpet — the door of her dressing-room, all 
lined with white marble, a larger room than the 
bedroom, and with windows unscreened and very 
wide, opening on the garden with its patriarchal 
plane-trees. The letter still in her hand, she 
rested her arms on the sill of one of these 
windows to see the open sky, the trees, the 
splendour of the first roses, to feel on her cheeks 
the soft touch of the air and sun. But ah! what 
high walls enclosed the garden! _ Why such high 
walls, like those built round the yard of prisons 


12 DISENCHANTED II 


for solitary confinement? With buttresses at 
intervals to prop them up, they were so enor- 
mously high! their height contrived expressly to 
hinder any one in the tallest house in the neigh- 
bourhood from ever seeing who might be walking 
in that secret enclosure. 

In spite of its dismal seclusion the garden was 
very lovable, because it was very old, with moss 
and lichen growing on its stones, and because its 
walks were invaded by grass between the box- 
edges; a jet of water danced in a marble basin of 
antique fashion, and it had a little kiosque, much 
the worse for time, to dream in under the shade 
of the gnarled and knotted planes crowded with 
birds’ nests. All these had this garden of old; 
and above all it held a soul, a sweet, homesick 
spirit, a soul breathed into it little by little in the 
course of years, the sadly exhaled repining of 
cloistered women, of youth and beauty here kept 
captive. 

This morning four or five men, beardless 
negroes, were there in their shirt-sleeves, working 
at the preparations for the great event of to- 
morrow, one stretching an awning between the 
trees, another spreading splendid Asiatic rugs on 
the ground. Catching sight of the girl at the 
window, they greeted her with a twinkle of the 
eye full of covert meaning, and a ‘Good day’ at 
once familiar and respectful, which by an effort 
she returned with a frank smile, not at all scared 
by their gaze; till suddenly she started back in 
dismay at the aspect of a young peasant with a 
fair moustache, who came in loaded with baskets 


Il DISENCHANTED 13 


of flowers, and who must almost have seen her 
face. 

But the letter! She had in her hands a letter 
from André Lhéry —a real letter. For the 
moment this alone mattered. Last week she 
had committed the audacious freak of writing 
to him, so completely had the dread of this mar- 
riage, fixed for to-morrow, thrown her off her 
balance. Four pages of innocent self-betrayal, 
things which to her had seemed quite terrible; 
and to conclude, a request, an entreaty, that he 
would reply at once, poste-restante, to an assumed 
name. She had sent this off forthwith, for fear 
lest reflection should bring hesitancy, sent it off 
more or less at the mercy of good luck, having 
no exact address, with the complicity and assist- 
ance of her former governess, Mademoiselle Esther 
Bonneau — Bonneau de Saint-Miron, if you please, 
holding the diploma of the University and a quali- 
fication of Public Instruction — the lady who had 
taught her French, and added, for the fun of it, 
as a crowning accomplishment, a little slang 
studied in the works of ‘Gyp. 

It had reached its ies that child’s cry 
of distress, and the poet had replied, with a little 
undercurrent of suspicion and irony, but on the 
whole quite nicely, in a letter which could be 
‘shown to the most sarcastic of her friends, and 
would be enough to make them jealous. And 
then, all of a sudden, she was fired with impatience 
to make her cousins read it — cousins who were 
like sisters, — for they had declared that he would 
not answer. Their home was quite close, in the 


14 DISENCHANTED Il 


same high, lonely quarter of the city, so she could 
go in her wrapper without wasting time in dress- 
ing; and at once, in the languid imperious tone 
of a child addressing some over-indulgent old 
nurse, she called to some unseen attendant, 
‘Cadine!’ And again, more sharply, ‘Cadine!’ 
evidently being accustomed to know that some 
one was always waiting to serve her caprices; then, 
as Cadine did not appear, she pressed the knob 
of an electric bell. 

Finally Cadine came, a figure even more in- 
congruous in such a room than the text from 
the Koran in gold embroidery above the bed: 
a perfectly black face, a head wrapped in a veil 
spangled with silver — an Ethiopian slave, whose 
name was Kondjé-Gul (Rosebud). Her young 
mistress addressed her in some far-away tongue, 
an Asiatic language, amazing surely to the hang- 
ings, the furniture, and the books. 

“Kondjé-Gul, you are never on the spot!’ but 
the reproof was spoken in a tone of affectionate 
melancholy which greatly mitigated it. And it 
was indeed a base reproach, for Kondjé-Gul was, 
on the contrary, always a great deal too much 
on the spot, like a tiresomely faithful dog, and her 
mistress was, in fact, rather the victim of the 
custom of the country which allows no bolts to 
the doors; permitting the women of the household 
to walk in at any hour, as if all the rooms were 
theirs, so that no one is ever sure of an instant 
of solitude. Kondjé-Gul, entering on tip-toe, 
had come certainly twenty times that morning 
to be at hand when her young mistress should 


II DISENCHANTED 15 


wake. And how strongly she had been tempted 
to blow out the burning taper. But then! It 
was on the writing-table, and she was forbidden 
ever to touch anything there; it was to her a 
shrine of dangerous mysteries, and she feared 
lest by extinguishing that little flame she might 
break who knows what spell. 

“Kondjé-Gul, my tcharchaf,' quick. I want to 
go to see my cousins.’ 

And Kondjé-Gul proceeded to wrap the girl 
in black. Black was the skirt she put on over 
the wrapper made by the right maker, black the 
long cape she threw over her shoulders, and black 
the thick veil fastened by pins to the hood she 
pulled down over her face to hide it as under 
a cowl. As she trotted to and fro to shroud her 
young mistress, she murmured sentences in her 
Asiatic tongue, talking to herself, as it seemed, 
or chanting a song — childish, lulling things, as 
not taking a serious view of the little bride’s 
melancholy. 

“He is fair, he is handsome, is the young Bey 
who will come to-morrow to carry away my sweet 
mistress. And how happy we shall be in the fine 
palace to which he will take us both!’ 

“Be silent, Cadine; ten times have I told you 
I will not hear him mentioned!’ 

And the next moment: ‘Cadine, you were 
there, you must have heard his voice the day 
when he came to talk to my father. Tell me, 
what is the Bey’s voice like? At all soft?’ 

“As soft as the music of your piano, the music 


1 Enveloping veils worn on the street. 


16 DISENCHANTED I 


you make with your left hand, you know, at the 
end where the notes cease. As sweet as that — 
oh, and he is so fair and handsome, that young 
Bey { 

“Well, well; so much the better,’ interrupted 
the girl in French, with a mocking accent that 
was almost Parisian. 

And she added in the Asiatic tongue: 

‘Is my grandmother up, do you know?’ 

“No, the Lady said she would stay in bed late 
to look the fresher to-morrow.’ 

‘Well, when she wakes, let her be told I have 
gone to my cousins. Go and tell old Ismail to 
escort me — you and he — I will take you both.’ 

Meanwhile Mademoiselle Esther Bonneau (de 
Saint-Miron), upstairs in her own room — the 
room she had had in former days when she lived 
in the house, and that she had come back to now 
to be present at to-morrow’s high function — 
Mademoiselle Esther Bonneau had some prickings 
of conscience. It was not she, of course, who 
had brought Kant’s works to find a place on the 
white writing-table, nor Nietzsche’s, nor Baude- 
laire’s even. For eighteen months past, since her 
pupil’s education was regarded as finished, she 
had been settled under the roof of another Pasha 
to teach his little girls, and not till then had her 
first charge emancipated herself in the matter of 
reading, since there was nobody to check her 
vagaries. Still, all the same, the governess felt 
herself to a certain extent responsible for the 
erratic flight taken by that youthful mind. And 
this correspondence with André Lhéry to which 





I DISENCHANTED 17 


she had lent herself — to what might it not lead? 
Two persons, to be sure, who would never meet; 
that, at least, was quite certain; custom and 
barred windows would hinder that. And yet 

When she presently went downstairs again, she 
found herself face to face with a little figure 
bundled up like a black bogey to go out in the 
street, very excited and in a great hurry. 

“And where are you off to, my dear?’ 

“To see my cousins and show them this.’ 
This was the letter. ‘You must come too, of 
course. We will all read it together there. 
Come, let us be trotting.’ 

“To your cousins? By all means —I will get 
my hat and veil again.’ 

“Your hat! That means an hour — Drat it!’ 

‘Come, my child, come!’ 

‘Come? Where, what? Even if you don’t 
- say it you “drat it” too, when you are in 
a temper. Drat the hat! and drat the veil, 
and drat the young Bey — drat the future, drat 
life — death — drat everything!’ 

Mademoiselle Bonneau had a suspicion that 
a flood of tears was threatening, and to effect a 
diversion she clasped her hands, bowed her head 
in the attitude sacred on the stage to tragic 
remorse, and said: 

“And to think that your unhappy grandmother 
paid and kept me for seven years for such a 
result !’ 

The black bogey, in fits of laughter under her 
veil, in the twinkling of an eye had thrown a lace 
kerchief over Mademoiselle Bonneau’s head, and 

c 





18 DISENCHANTED Il 


now dragged her off with her arm round her 
waist. 

“That I should be bundled up is one thing; I 
must, it is the law. But you, who are not com- 
pelled — and to go two yards — and in this part 
of the city, where you never see even a cat.’ 

They ran downstairs two steps at a time. 
Kondjé-Gul and old Ismail, an Ethiopian eunuch, 
waited for them at the bottom to attend them; 
Kondjé-Gul muffled from head to foot in a green 
shroud spangled with silver, and the man buttoned 
and belted into a black European frock coat, in 
which, but for his fez, he might have been a 
country attorney. 

The heavy door was thrown open; they were 
outside on the hill, in the bright sunshine of 
eleven o'clock, looking down on a wooded ceme- 
tery, thick-set with cypresses and tombs with tar- 
nished gilding, which sloped gently down to the 
deep bay crowded with shipping. 

And beyond the inlet of the sea at their feet, 
on the other side, half-hidden by the cypress trees 
in the sad, peaceful wood, high up against the sky 
in the clear, limpid air, the mass stood outlined 
of the city which for twenty years had haunted 
André Lhéry with longing. Stamboul sat en- 
throned, not dim in twilight, as in the poet’s 
dreams, but sharp, luminous, and real. 

Real —though veiled in a diaphanous blue 
mist, in remote silence and splendour, Stamboul 
was there, Stamboul the immemorial, still the 
same as when the old Khalifs had looked out 
on it; as when Suleyman the Great had imagined 


II DISENCHANTED 19 


and created its noble outline by adding the finest 
of the cupolas. Of all this vast number of 
minarets and domes standing up in the morning 
air none seemed to be in ruins, and yet over all 
there was an indescribable impression of Time. 
In spite of distance and the rather dazzling light, 
it could be seen that it was very, very old. The 
eye was not deceived; a ghost, a magnificent 
ghost of the past, is this city, still standing, with 
its endless spindles of stone, so slender, so light, 
that how they have lasted is a marvel. Minarets 
and mosques have faded in the course of years to 
various tints of whiteness streaked with neutral 
greys; and as to the myriad wooden houses 
crouching in their shadows, they are yellow ochre, 
russet brown, subdued by the almost unceasing 
haze exhaled from the all-surrounding sea. And 
the vast prospect was mirrored in the glassy waters 
of the gulf. 

The two women, the one veiled and the other 
with the lace kerchief tied anyhow on her head, 
walked quickly, followed by their negro attend- 
ants, and scarcely glancing at the wonderful view 
which was the background to all their days. 
They took a path with paving stones in wild 
disorder along the hill, between old and aristo- 
cratic mansions mummified behind their gates on 
one hand, and on the other the hillside cemetery 
of Kassim Pacha, the fairy magnificence of the 
view gleaming between its gloomy trees. The 
swallows, which had built their nests everywhere 
under the barred and shuttered balconies, were 
chirping deliciously, the cypresses exhaled a good 


20 DISENCHANTED Il 


smell of resin, the ancient earth, full of the bones 
of the dead, exhaled a fresh smell of spring. 

They did not, in fact, meet a creature in their 
short walk, no one but a water-carrier in his 
oriental dress, who had come to fill his water-skin 
at a very old cistern by the roadside, of ancient 
marble sculptured with exquisite arabesques. 

On arriving at a house with closely barred 
windows, a pasha’s house, a tall, moustachioed 
porter, dressed in red and gold with pistols in 
his sash, opened the door without uttering a 
word; and they, as intimates and privileged, 
without a word on their part, went upstairs to 
the harem. 

A vast white room on the first floor, whence, 
through the open door, came the voices and 
laughter of young women. They were amusing 
themselves by talking French, no doubt because 
they were discussing dress. ‘The point in question 
was whether a certain bunch of roses on a bodice 
would look best placed on this side or on that. 
‘Six of one and half-a-dozen of the other,’ said 
one. 

‘Much of a muchness, only more so,’ asserted 
another, a little red-haired damsel with a skin like 
milk, and saucy eyes, whose governess had been 
past mistress of slang. 

This was the bedroom of the cousins, two 
sisters of eighteen and twenty-one, for whom the 
bride of the morrow had reserved the privilege of 
first reading the great man’s letter. There were 
two white enamel bedsteads for the two girls, each 
with its Arabic text, embroidered in gold on a 


Il DISENCHANTED at 


velvet panel, hanging above it against the wall. 
On the floor, other beds had been improvised, 
mattresses with coverlets of blue or pink satin, for 
four girls invited to the wedding festivities. On 
the chairs — white enamelled chairs with Pompa- 
dour flowered silk —their dresses for the great event 
but just arrived from Paris, lay in light masses of 
gay colour, all the usual disorder of a day before 
a function; an encampment it might have been — 
an encampment of little gipsy maidens, but very 
fashionable and very rich. As the Moslem rule 
prohibits women from going out of doors after 
dark, the pleasant custom has grown up of their 
remaining in each other’s houses for days or even 
weeks together, with or without any reason, some- 
times merely to pay a visit; and dormitories are 
arranged, with much chat and laughter. Oriental 
veils were lying about, wreaths of flowers, and 
jewels by Lalique. ‘The window bars and carved 
wood lattices gave a sort of clandestine note to all 
this strewn luxury, all intended to charm or dazzle 
other women, but which no eye of moustachioed 
man might ever be allowed to gaze on. And in 
one corner two negress slaves, seated at their ease, 
were singing their native songs, beating out the 
time on a little muffled drum. Our vehement 
democrats of the West might learn lessons of 
fraternity in this easygoing land, where, in practice, 
caste and social differences are not recognised, and 
the humblest servants of either sex are always 
treated as members of the family. 

The arrival of the bride-elect startled and 
amazed them all. She was certainly not expected 


22 DISENCHANTED II 


that morning. What could have brought her? 
Black, entirely in her street wrappings, how 
mysterious and ominous she appeared in the 
midst of all this white and pink and pale blue, 
all these silks and muslins. Why had she come 
in this unexpected way, to see her bridesmaids at 
home? 

She threw back her mournful veil, showing her 
dainty features, and in an airy, uninterested way 
she explained in French—a language evidently 
familiar in the harems of Constantinople: 

‘A letter I want to show you.’ 

‘A letter — from whom ?’ 

‘Ah! guess now.’ 

‘From the aunt at Adrianople, I wager, 
promising you a set of brilliants.’ 

O. 

“Then from the aunt at Erivan, who is sending 
you a pair of Angora cats as a wedding present.’ 

‘No, again. Itisfromastranger. It is — from 
a gentleman 

‘A gentleman! How dreadful! A _ gentle- 
man, you little wretch !’ 

And she held out the letter, satisfied with the 
effect she had produced; two or three pretty 
golden heads — real gold and artificial gold —came 
together at once to see the signature. 

“André Lhéry!— No! Has he answered you? 
—TIs it from him? Impossible!’ 

All the little circle had been taken into con-: 
fidence as to the letter to the author. There is 
such a consentaneous spirit of revolt among the 
Turkish women of to-day against the severe rule 





II DISENCHANTED 23 


of the harem, that they never betray each other; 
if the delinquency were ever so serious, instead of 
quite innocent as in this case, there would be the 
same secrecy, the same silence. 

They crowded up to read it together, head 
against head, including Mademoiselle Bonneau de 
Saint-Miron, all holding on to the paper. At the 
third sentence they shouted with laughter. 

‘Oh, do you see? He will not believe you 
are Turkish. That is too good! He knows all 
about us so well, it would seem, that he is quite 
sure you are not.’ 

‘But that really is a triumph, my dear,’ said 
Zeyneb, the elder of the cousins. ‘That shows 
how keen your wit is and the elegance of your 
style. : 

‘A triumph!’ retorted the red-haired girl, with 
a pert nose and an expression of comic mockery. 
‘A triumph! If he takes you to be a Perote, 
thank you for nothing, I say.’ 

The tone in which the word Perote was said (an 
inhabitant of Pera) was a thing to hear. In the 
mere pronunciation of it she had infused all her 
scorn as a pure-bred daughter of the Osmanli for 
the Levantines — Armenians, Greeks, and Jews — 
of which the Perote is the prototype.’ 

“Poor Lhéry,’ added Kerimeh, one of the young 
visitors; ‘he is behind the times. He must be 
still in the Turkey of the novels of 1830 — 
narghilehs, sweetmeats, and the divan all day.’ 


1 While heartily agreeing with the Osmanlis as to the Perotes in general, 
I must admit that I have known many amiable exceptions to the rule; men 
of perfect respectability and breeding, women who would be exquisite in any 
country and any society. —P. L 


24 DISENCHANTED II 
“Or even,’ added Melek, the saucy, red-haired 


maiden, ‘merely in the Turkey of his own youth. 
He must be getting a little wrinkled, you know, 
must your poet.’ 

It was certainly true, indisputably true, that 
André Lhéry could no longer be young. And this 
fact intruded itself for the first time on the fancy 
of his little unknown adorer, who had never thought 
about it; a rather disappointing fact, disturbing 
her dream, and casting pale melancholy on her 
worship of him. 

But in spite of their pretence at laughter and 
irony they were all in love with the man, so remote 
and almost disembodied — all who were there; 
they loved him for having loved their Turkey and 
spoken with respect of their Islam. A _ letter 
written by him to one of them was an event in 
their cloistered lives, in which nothing ever happens 
till the great annihilating catastrophe of marriage. 
It was read aloud. Each one was eager to hold 
the sheet of paper on which his hand had rested. 
And then, all being students of character from 
writing, they tried to unveil the mystery of his 
handwriting. 

But a mamma appeared, the mamma of the 
two sisters, and at once the subject was changed 
and the letter was conjured away. Not that this 
was a very strict mamma with her placid face, but 
she would have scolded all the same, and, above all, 
she would not have understood, she was of another 
generation, spoke but little French, and had read 
nothing since Alexandre Dumas pére. A wide gulf 
lay between her and her daughters, an abyss of at 


1 DISENCHANTED 25 


least two centuries, so fast does the world progress 
in Turkey nowadays. Even physically she was a 
different being; her fine eyes were soft, with 
a rather vacant calm which was far from the 
admirers of André Lhéry; she had, in fact, restricted 
her part on earth to being a tender mother and 
a blameless wife, and had asked no more. Besides 
this she wore her European clothes badly, and 
was awkward in over-trimmed dresses; while her 
daughters, on the contrary, already understood 
how to be elegant and refined in very simple 
materials. 

Next the French governess in the house made 
her appearance — on the same pattern as Esther 
Bonneau, but younger and even more romantic. 
And now, as the room was really too crowded 
with so many persons, and gowns lying on the 
chairs, and mattresses on the floor, they went into 
the larger adjoining room, in ‘modern style,’ the 
drawing-room of the harem. 

Here entered presently, without knocking, for 
the door always stood open, a fat German lady, 
wearing spectacles and a hat loaded with feathers, 
leading by the hand Fahr-el-Nissa, the youngest 
of the guests. And at once the whole bevy of 
girls began talking in German, with as much 
ease as before they had spoken in French. ‘This 
portly lady was the music mistress, and a woman 
of indisputable talent; she and Fahr-el-Nissa, who 
already played like an artist, had just been practis- 
ing a new arrangement of Bach’s fugues, for 
two pianos, and each player had thrown her whole 
soul into it. 


26 DISENCHANTED Il 


They talked German with no more difficulty 
than Italian or English, for these young Turkish 
damsels read Dante, Byron, and Shakespeare in 
the original. Better cultivated than most girls of 
the same class in the West, as a consequence, no 
doubt, of their strict seclusion and long quiet 
evenings, they had devoured alike ancient classics 
and modern degenerates, and in music were 
equally enthusiastic for Gluck, and for César 
Franck, or Wagner, or for reading the scores of 
Vincent d’Indy. Perhaps, too, they profited by 
the long repose and mental slothfulness of their 
mothers and grandmothers; in their brain matter, 
newly tilled, or at least long fallow, every seed 
sprouted and grew, as rank weeds and beautiful 
poisonous flowers run wild in virgin soil. 

The drawing-room of the haremlik that 
morning, grew fuller and fuller. The two 
negresses, with their little drum, had followed 
their mistresses. After them came an old lady, 
whom all rose to greet with respect — the grand- 
mother. Then they all spoke in Turkish, for 
she knew nothing of Western languages, and 
what did she care for André Lhéry, this ancient 
dame? Her dress, embroidered in silver, was 
of the old Turkish make, and a Circassian veil 
covered her white hair. The gulf of non-com- 
prehension between her and her grand-daughters 
was for ever unfathomable, and at meals she had 
more than once horrified them by the habit she 
had not quite lost of eating rice with her fingers, 
after the manner of her forebears, though even as 
she did it she was all the while a great lady to 


II DISENCHANTED a7 


those finger-tips, and always an imposing per- 
sonage. 

So, out of deference to the old lady, they all 
spoke Turkish, and at once the hum of voices 
sounded more harmonious — as soft as music. 

Presently a lady came in, slender and un- 
dulating in her gait; she came from outside, and, 
of course, looked like a black spectre. ‘This was 
Alimeh Hanum, a diplomaed professor of philos- 
ophy in the college for girls founded by His 
Imperial Majesty the Sultan. She came regularly 
three times a week to give lessons to Melek in 
Arabic and Persian literature. There was no 
lesson to-day, of course, on the eve of the 
wedding, when everybody’s head was turned; 
but when she had removed her cowl-like veil, 
showing her pleasant, serious face, the conversa- 
tion turned on the old poets of Iran, and Melek, 
now quite grave, recited a passage from the ‘Land 
of Roses,’ by Saadi. 

No signs here of odalisques nor of narghilehs, 
no sweetmeats in this Pasha’s harem, consisting of 
S grandmother, a mother, the daughters, and two 
nieces with their governesses. 

And, in fact, with two or three exceptions 
perhaps, every harem in Constantinople is of the 
same type; the harem in these days is neither 
more nor less than the female part of a family 
constituted as our own families are, and educated 
in the same way, with the exception of their seclu- 
sion, of the thick veils worn out of doors, and of 
the improbability of ever exchanging ideas with a 
man, unless it be the father, or the husband, or 


28 DISENCHANTED Il 


a brother, or, in some cases, by special grace, a 
very intimate cousin who was a playfellow in 
childhood. 

They were now speaking French again, and 
discussing dress, when a voice, so clear and pure 
that it might have been from Heaven, was heard 
outside as if dropping from on high; the Imam 
of a neighbouring mosque was calling from the 
top of a minaret, bidding the faithful to midday 
prayer. 

On this the little bride, remembering that 
her grandmother breakfasted at noon, fled like 
Cinderella, followed by Mademoiselle Bonneau, 
who was the more alarmed of the two at the 
idea that the old lady might be waiting. 


Ii 


IT was a silent meal, this last breakfast in her old 
home, as she sat between two women so obscurely 
hostile as the governess and her stern grand- 
mother. 

When it was over, she went to her room, and 
only wished she could lock and double-lock 
herself in, but Turkish women’s bedrooms have 
no locks; she could only give orders through 
Kondjé-Gul to all the servants and slaves, who 
were for ever on guard, day and night, as is the 
custom, in the halls and the long passages of her 
suite of rooms, like so many tame and intrusive 
watch-dogs. 

During this last supreme day, still her own, 
she wanted to prepare herself as if for death, sort 
her papers, and a thousand little treasures, and, 
- above all, burn things, burn them for fear of the 
eye of the unknown man who in a few hours 
would be her master. There was no haven of 
refuge for her distressful soul, and her terror and 
revolt increased as the day went on. 

She seated herself in front of her writing-table 
and relighted the taper which was to communicate 
its flame to a host of mysterious little letters that 
lay sleeping in the white enamelled drawers; 

29 


30 DISENCHANTED Ill 


letters from friends just married, or quaking in 
anticipation of marriage ; letters in Turkish, in 
French, in German, in English, all proclaiming 
rebellion, all poisoned by the deep pessimism 
which, in our day, is ravaging the harems of the 
atks, Now and again she re-read a sentence, 
hesitated regretfully, and then, after all, put the 
little sheet into the colourless flame —a hardly 
visible glimmer in the sunshine. And all these 
treasures, all the little secrets of beautiful young 
women, their suppressed indignation, their vain 
laments —all turned to ashes, piled up and mingled 
in a copper brazier, the only oriental object in the 
room. 

The drawers emptied, the letters destroyed, 
there still lay before her a large blotting-case with 
a gold snap, crammed full of note-books written 
in French. Should she burn these too? No, 
she really had not the courage. ‘They were the 
whole history of her girlhood, her private diary, 
begun on her thirteenth birthday, the fatal day 
when she had donned the tcharchaj, to use the 
phrase of the country; that is to say, the day 
when she was condemned for ever to hide her 
face from the world, to take the veil and become 
one of the innumerable black spectres of Con- 
stantinople. 

Nothing earlier than this veiling was recorded 
in her journal. Nothing of her infancy as a 
little barbaric princess, far away in the remotest 
plains of Circassia, the obscure realm over which 
her family had ruled for two centuries. Nothing, 
either, of her life as a little girl in the fashionable 


Ill DISENCHANTED au 


world, when, she being about eleven years old, 
her father had come to settle in Constantinople, 
where the title of Marshal of the Court had been 
conferred on him by the Sultan; that had been 
a time of wonders, of elegant tutelage, with 
lessons, too, to be learnt and exercises to be 
written. For two years she had been seen at 
fétes, at tennis parties, at the Embassy dances; 
she had waltzed like a grown-up girl with the 
most fastidious partners of the European colony; 
her card was always full, for she charmed them 
all by her sweet little face, her grace, her luxu- 
rious elegance, and also by an inimitable expres- 
sion—a look at once very gentle and very capable 
of revenge, very diffiident and very haughty. And 
then one fine day, at a ball given for children at 
the English Embassy, some one asked: ‘Where is 
the little Circassian?’ and the men of the country 
had replied quite simply: ‘Ah, of course, you did 
not know. She has taken the Tcharchaf.’ 

“Taken the Tcharchaf!’ as much as to say 
buried, smuggled away by the stroke of a wand, 
never to be seen again. If by chance you should 
meet her going past in a shuttered carriage, she 
will be a mere black shape, impossible to recognise. 
She might as well be dead. 

So, her thirteen years complete, she had passed, 
in obedience to an immutable law, into the veiled 
world which lives in Constantinople on the 
confines of the other, which you rub up against 
in the streets but may never look at, and which 
at sunset is shut up within prison bars; the world 


32 DISENCHANTED Il 


of which you are aware all about you, a disturbing 
and attracting influence, but impenetrable, while 
it watches, conjectures, criticises, and sees many 
things through its immovable shroud of black 
silk, and guesses all it does not see. 

Thus, suddenly imprisoned at the age of 
thirteen, with a father who was always on duty at 
the Palace, and a stern grandmother devoid of all 
show of tenderness, alone in a vast house at 
Kassim Pacha, a quarter of old mansions and 
cemeteries, where at nightfall silence and terror 
were all pervading, she had devoted herself 
passionately to study. And this had lasted till she 
was now within a few days of two-and-twenty — 
this ardent desire to know everything: literature, 
history, transcendental philosophy. Among the 
young women her friends, themselves very highly 
educated in this propitious seclusion, she was 
regarded as a sort of star, whose erudition and 
opinions and innocent audacity were quoted, while 
her expensive elegance was copied; especially 
was she the standard-bearer of female insurrection 
against the discipline of the harem. 

No, after all, she would not burn this diary, 
begun on the first day of the tcharchaf. She 
would rather confide it, carefully sealed up, 
to some trustworthy and rather independent 
friend, whose drawers were not liable to be over- 
hauled by a husband. And, who could tell? In 
the future, perhaps, she might ask for it back 
again, and carry it on further. She clung to it, 
because she had almost fixed in its pages the details 
of the life which must end to-morrow, the happy 


Il DISENCHANTED 33 


moments of the past, certain spring days more 
strangely bright than others, evenings of more 
delicious languor in the old garden of roses, and 
excursions on the enchanted waters of the Bos- 
phorus with the cousins she so fondly loved. All 
this would seem more irrevocably sunk in the 
abyss of time if that poor diary were destroyed. 
Writing it had been her chief resource against the 
melancholy moods of an immured maiden, and 
suddenly she was moved to write in it again at 
this very moment, and divert the distress of this 
last day. So, still sitting at her writing-table, she 
took up her pen, a little rod-of gold with a ring 
of rubies. When, in the first pages of this 
record, now nine years old, she had adopted the 
French language, it was to make sure that neither 
her grandmother nor any one else in the house 
should find amusement in reading it. But for 
the last two years, the French, written with the 
utmost care and elegance, had been intended for 
the eye of an imaginary reader. A young woman’s 
diary always is intended for a reader, fictitious or 
real, but necessarily fictitious when the writer is 
a Turkish woman. That reader was a remote, 
very far-away person—for her, indeed, he hardly 
existed —the author, André Lhéry. It was all 
written now for him, to him, even in quite in- 
voluntary imitation of something of his manner. 
It assumed the form of a letter addressed to him 
in which, for more complete illusion, she called 
him by his name, André, as if he were a real 
friend, a big brother. 

So, that evening, this was what the little hand, 

D 


34. DISENCHANTED Ill 


loaded with too splendid rings, traced upon the 
paper: 
April 18, 1got. 


‘I have never told you anything about my 
childhood, have I, André? And you must know 
this: I, whom you have thought so civilised, am 
by nature a little barbarian. Something will 
always survive in me of the child of open spaces, 
who once used to gallop on horseback to the 
clatter of arms, or dance in the lamplight to the 
tinkle of her silver girdle. 

‘And in spite of a veneer of European 
culture, when my newly found soul of which I 
was so proud, my soul as a thinking being, my 
self-conscious soul, when this soul of mine suffers 
too acutely, these memories of my childhood come 
back to haunt me. They rise up dominant, vivid 
and brilliant; they show me a land of light, a lost 
paradise, to which I cannot — nay, and would not— 
return; a Circassian village far from hence, far, 
far beyond the Konieh, known as Karadjemir. 
There my family has reigned ever since it came 
from the Caucasus. My ancestors in their own 
land were the Khans of Kiziltopeh, the Sultan of 
that time gave them as a fief the territory of 
Karadjemir. There I dwelt till I was eleven 
years old. I was free and happy. Girls in 
Circassia are not veiled; they dance and talk with 
young men, and choose their husbands by the 
guidance of their heart. 

‘Our house was the finest in the village, and on 
all sides long avenues of acacias led up to it. 


1 DISENCHANTED 35 


Acacias stood round it, too, in a wide circle, and 
the least breath of wind bowed: their branches as if 
in homage; then the scented petals fell like snow. 
In my dreams I see a rapid river, from the living- 
room I could hear the song of its hurrying 
ripples. Oh! how fast they rushed on in their 
flow to the unknown bourne! When I was little, 
I laughed to see them foam in a rage against the 
rocks. 

‘By the side of the hamlet, in front of the 
house, stretched a wide, open space. There we 
were wont to dance in the Circassian mode to the 
sound of our old-world instruments. Two and 
two we formed in chains, all draped in white silk, 
with garlands of flowers in our hair. I can see 
them now—my companions of those days. Where 
are they? ‘They were all lovely and gentle, with 
long eyes and bright smiles. 

“As day fell in summer my father’s Circassians, 
the youths of the village, left their labor and rode 
on horseback across the plain. My father, an old 
soldier, placed himself at their head, and led them 
as to a charge. When I was little, one of them 
would perch me on his saddle; I was intoxicated 
with speed, with the passion that had been silently 
rising all day from the burning soil to break out 
in the evening in the clatter of arms and wild 
songs. he sky would presently change colour; 
first came the purple hour of an evening battle, 
and the riders shouted battle songs to the winds. 
Then came the rosy, opal-tinted hour 





She had got so far as this opal-tinted hour, 


36 DISENCHANTED Ul 


wondering if the epithet might not be too preten- 
tious to satisfy André, when Kondjé-Gul, in spite 
of prohibition, burst into the room. 

“He is there, mistress, he is there!’ 

“He is there ? — Who?’ 

“He, the young Bey. He has been to call on ' 
the Pasha, your father, and he is just going away. 
Quick, run to your window and you will see him.’ 
To which the little princess replied, without 
moving, and with an icy indifference which quite 
' stupefied good old Kondjé-Gul: — 

“And you disturb me for that? I shall see 
him too soon! ‘To say nothing of seeing him as 
often as I want till I am an old woman!’ 

This she said to emphasise, in the presence of 
the servants, her disdain of the young lord. But as 
soon as Kondjé-Gul had disappeared in deep con- 
fusion, she tremulously went up to the window; 
he had just mounted, in his handsome uniform as 
a staff-oficer. She had time to see that his 
moustache was in fact fair, rather too fair for her 
taste, but that he was a handsome youth with a 
fine stalwart figure. He was none the less the 
enemy, the master forced upon her, who should 
never be admitted to her secret soul. Then, 
determined to think no more about him, she went 
back to her table — her cheeks flushed and tingling, 
nevertheless — to go on with her journal, her letter 
to the unreal confidant. 


“The rosy hour (merely rosy, that was certain; 
opal-tinted was erased) when memory awakes and 
the Circassians would recall the country of their 


Ill DISENCHANTED a7 


ancestors; one would chant a song of exile and 
the others would draw rein to listen to the single 
mournful voice. Then the hour was violet, tender 
and sweet; the whole plain would ring with a 
hymn of love. And then the horsemen hastily 
turned their steeds and spurred them to a gallop to 
ride home. The flowers drooped in the road, 
exhaling their last fragrance. ‘The riders glittered, 
seeming to bear with them on their weapons all 
the liquid silver that floated in the summer 
twilight. 

‘In the distance a glare of fire marked the little 
spot where the acacias of Karadjemir were grouped 
in the midst of the level, silent steppe. “The flame 
grew and soon became a flare of tall flames licking 


~~the first stars; for those who had remained at 


home lighted bonfires, and round about these were 
girls dancing and singing, accentuated by waving 
white robes and floating scarves. The young 
people amused themselves, while men of riper age 
sat out of doors smoking, and mothers, looking 
through the window screens, watched the coming 
of love to their children. 

‘In those days I was a queen. My father, 
Tewfik Pasha, and Seniha, my mother, loved me 
above all else, for their other children were dead. 
I was the Sultana of the hamlet; no one else had 
such rich dresses or such finely chased belts of 
gold and silver, and when by any chance a mer- 
chant from the Caucasus passed that way, with his 
sacks full of gems and bales of silk spangled with 
gold, every one in the neighbourhood knew that 
he must call first at our house; no one would 


38 DISENCHANTED I 


have dared to buy so much as a scarf till the 
Pasha’s daughter had taken her choice of the 
treasures. 

‘My mother was wise and gentle; my father was 
kind, and was known to be just. Every passing 
stranger might knock at our door; the house was 
his. Though poor he was as welcome as the 
Sultan himself. An exile, a fugitive — and I have 
seen such —the shelter of the house would have 
protected him till his hosts were killed. But woe 
to the man who should have tried to make use of 
Tewfik Pasha to help him in any base or even 
doubtful action; my father, though so kind, could 
be a ruthless judge. I have seen him ! 

“Such, André, was my childhood. Then we 
lost my mother, and my father would not stay at 
Karadjemir without her, so he brought me with 
him to Constantinople to my grandmother’s house, 
near my cousins. 

“Now, my uncle, Arif Bey, governs there in his 
stead. But hardly any change has taken place in 
that obscure corner of the world, where the days 
pass on, silently linking into years. I believe a 
mill has been erected on the river; the little waves 
which used only to play at being furious, are now 
trained to be of use, and I fancy I can hear them 
bewailing their lost liberty. But the fine old 
house still stands among the trees, and this spring, 
once again, the acacias will have shed their snows 
on the roads where I sported as a child. And 
some other little girl, no doubt, goes riding in my 
place with the horsemen. 

‘Nearly eleven years have passed since then. 





Il DISENCHANTED 39 


“The gay and thoughtless child is now a grown- 
up gitl, who has shed many tears. Would she 
have been happier if her old life had still gone on? 
But it was written that she must leave it because 
she had to be transformed into a thinking being, 
and her orbit was destined one day to cross yours. 
Oh, who will tell us the wherefore, the supreme 
reason for such meetings, when souls scarcely 
touch and yet never again forget each other? For 
you, André, you too will never forget me.’ 


She was tired of writing. And, in fact, the 
brief vision of the Bey had disturbed the flow of 
her memory. 

What could she do to finish this last day? 
Ah! the garden; the dear garden, haunted by 
her youthful dreams; she would linger there till 
nightfall. Quite at the end there was a certain 
bench under the venerable plane-trees against the 
old moss-grown wall; there she would sit alone 
till the close of the April day, which seemed to 
her to promise no to-morrow. She rang at once 
for Kondjé-Gul to give the necessary warning of 
her coming; orders to all the gardeners, coachmen, 
male domestics of every kind, that they must leave 
the paths clear, so as not to profane by a glance the 
little goddess who meant to walk there unveiled. 

Nay, on second thoughts she would not go 
out; it was always possible that she might meet 
some eunuch or women servants with their 
meaning smiles at the bride-elect, and in their 
presence she would have to assume the rapturous 
expression required by etiquette in such circum- 


40 DISENCHANTED Il 


stances. And then, how exasperating to see all 
the preparations for the féte, tables laid under the 
trees and fine rugs spread on the ground. 

So instead she took refuge in a little room next 
her bedroom, where there was an Erard piano. 
She must bid farewell to music too, since there 
would be no piano in her new home. The young 
Bey’s mother —a 1320,’ as these old-fashioned 
ladies are called by the young flowers of hothouse 
culture brought up in modern Turkish homes — 
an unmitigated 1320, had, not without mistrust, 
allowed the library of new books in Western 
tongues and the illustrated magazines, but the 
piano had evidently shocked her; they had not 
dared to mention it again. The old lady had 
come several times to see her son’s betrothed, 
overwhelming her with coaxing ways and little 
old-world compliments which fretted the girl, 
staring her out of countenance with persevering 
attention, so as to be the better able to describe 
her to her son. So, no more piano in her home 
after to-morrow, her home over there, across the 
bay, in the very heart of old Stamboul. Seated at 
the instrument, her strong, swift little hands, 
wonderfully accomplished and supple, ran over the 
keys, at first improvising vague and extravagant 
impromptus with neither head nor tail, to an 
accompaniment of sharp rattling taps, each time 
her heavy loose rings knocked against the flats and 
sharps. Then she took off her rings, and after 
a moment’s thought she began a very difficult 


1 The nickname given to any one who recognises no dates but from the 
Hegira, instead of using the European calendar, 


Il DISENCHANTED 41 


arrangement by Liszt of an air by Wagner; and 
by degrees she ceased to be the girl who was, on 
the morrow, to be married to Captain Hamdi 
Bey, aide-de-camp to His Imperial Majesty; she 
was the betrothed of a young warrior with long 
hair, who dwelt in a castle on the heights, in the 
darkness of the clouds, overhanging a_ broad 
tragical river; she heard the symphony of old 
legendary ages in the deep forests of the north. 
But when she ceased playing, when the glamour 
had died away with the last vibration of the strings, 
she noticed the sunbeams already reddening and 
coming in almost level through the eternal 
chequers. of the windows. Yes, the day was 
ending, and she was suddenly seized with a terror 
of being alone on this last evening, though just 
now she had wished it. She flew to her grand- 
mother to ask permission, which was granted, and 
wrote in haste to her cousins, begging them dis- 
tressfully, come what might, to visit her and keep 
her company — but only the two sisters, not the 
other little damsels encamped in their room; only 
Zeyneb and Melek, her bosom friends, her con- 
fidants, the sisters of her soul. She feared their 
mother might not allow it on account of their 
many visitors; she feared lest the hour were too 
late, the sun too low, for Turkish women do not 
go out after it has set. And from the barred 
window she looked after old Ismail, who hurried 
off with the message. 

For some days past, even with her cousins, who 
had been hurt by it, she had been silent on all 
serious matters, reserved, and almost haughty; 


42 DISENCHANTED Il 


even with those two she had cherished the decency 
of her misery; but she could no more: she 
wanted them, to weep on their shoulder. 

How fast it sank — the sun of her last evening! 
Would they have time to come? To know as 
soon as possible, she leaned over the street as far 
as the bars and wooden lattice would permit. It 
was now the ‘purple hour of evening battle,’ as she 
had written in her childhood’s diary, and thoughts 
of flight and open revolt raged in her indomitable 
and dainty little head. And yet what serene peace, 
what a fatalistic, resigned calm reigned around. 
An aromatic fragrance came up from the great 
funereal wood lying so quiet under the windows — 
the odour of the old, unchangeful soil of Turkey, 
of short grass and tiny plants that had basked all 
day in the April sun. The black-green of the 
trees standing out against the fiery west was here 
and there pierced, as it were riddled, by shafts of 
light. Here and there touches of ancient gilding 
flashed on the tops of those monumental mile- 
stones, stuck in haphazard in the ample space, 
scattered among the cypresses. The Turks have 
no terror of the dead; they do not exile them; 
they lay them to rest in the very heart of the 
cities. Beyond the melancholy objects in the fore- 
ground, and the spires of dark foliage standing up 
as straight as towers, in the intervals between them 
the distance could be seen — the matchless view: 
all Stamboul and the gulf, in the broad blaze of 
a fine sunset. Below, far below, the waters of the 
Golden Horn, down to which the graveyards 
sloped, were red and fiery as the sky itself; 


III DISENCHANTED 43 


hundreds of caiques furrowed their surface — the 
perennial to and fro following the closing of the 
bazaars; but from so high up no sound could be 
heard of their rippling wake or the splash of the 
oars; they looked like long insects creeping across 
a mirror. And the opposite shore, the shore of 
Stamboul, changed while she gazed. All the 
houses down by the sea, all the lower strata of 
the enormous pile, were blurred and blotted out, 
as it were, by the eternal violet haze of the even- 
ing, a mist of vapour and smoke. Stamboul 
changed like a mirage; no details were now visible, 
neither the decay nor the misery, nor the hideous- 
ness of some of the modern structures; it was a 
mere mass in outline, dark purple with edges of 
gold, a colossal city in cut jasper, bristling with 
spires and domes, set up as a screen to shut out a 
conflagration in heaven. 

And the same voices as had sounded at noon 
in clear celestial tones sang out again in the air, 
calling the faithful Moslems to the fourth prayer 
of the day — the sunset hour. 

The little prisoner, soothed in spite of herself 
by the glory and the peace, was growing uneasy 
about Zeyneb and Melek. Would they be able 
to come in spite of the late hour? She looked 
more eagerly towards the end of the road, shut in 
on one side by the old barred houses, and on the 
other by the beautiful home of the dead. 

Yes, they were coming. There they were, two 
slender black spectres with no face, just emerging 
from a great dusty gateway, and hurrying on, 
attended by two negroes with long sabres. They 


44 DISENCHANTED nt 


had settled it quickly, and were very soon ready, 
poor little things! And as she identified them 
hastening to respond to her cry of despair, she felt 
her eyes fill; tears, but comforting tears this time, 
rolled down her cheeks. 

As they came in, raising their veils, the bride 
threw herself weeping into their arms. 

They clasped her to their young hearts with 
tender pity. 

“We fancied somehow that you were not happy. 
But you would not say a word. We did not dare 
to speak of it. For many days past we felt you 
were so secret with us, so cold!’ 

“Well, you know my way. It is silly, but I 
am ashamed that any one should see me in 
distress.’ 

She was fairly sobbing now. 

‘But why, my dearest, did you not say 
6é No” yp 

‘Oh, I have said “No” so often. The list of 
men I have refused is really too long, it would 
seem. And consider, I am two-and-twenty, almost 
an old maid. After all, what does it matter, this 
one or another, since I must end by marrying 
somebody ?’ 

Before now she had heard others talk in this 
way on the eve of marriage, and their submission 
had disgusted her; now she had come to the same 
end. ‘Since I have not chosen and loved the 
man,’ one had said, ‘ what does it matter whether 
he is called Mehmed or Achmed? Shall I not 
have my children to console me for his presence ?’ 
Another, a quite young girl who accepted the first 


Il DISENCHANTED 45 


comer that offered, had excused herself by saying, 
“Why not the first as much as the second, of whom 
I shall know no more than of this one? What 
can I say in refusing? And then all the to-do; 
think of it, my dear!’ The apathy of all these 
girls had seemed to her incomprehensible, allowing 
themselves to be married off like slaves! And 
here was she consenting to just such a bargain, 
and to-morrow — to-morrow—was the dreadful day 
of reckoning. Weary of constantly refusing, con- 
stantly contending, she, like all the rest, had at 
last spoken the ‘Yes’ which had been her ruin, 
instead of the ‘No’ which would have saved her 
at least for a little while longer. And now, too 
late to retreat, she stood on the very edge of the 
abyss; it was to-morrow ! 

They wept together, all the three, shedding the 
tears which had been repressed for many a day by 
the pride of the betrothed, weeping the tears of 
bitter separation, as if one of them were condemned 
to death. 

Melek and Zeyneb, of course, were not to go 
home this evening, but to sleep here in their cousin’s 
room, as is customary when women go out at 
nightfall, and as they had constantly done during 
the last ten years. The three girls, always together, 
like inseparable sisters, were in the habit of sleep- 
ing together in one house or the other, but generally 
here with the young Circassian. 

This evening, when the slaves, without even 
asking for orders, had spread on the carpet the 
silken mattresses for the visitors, and the three 
girls were left to themselves, they felt as if they 


46 DISENCHANTED Il 


were keeping funereal watch by the dead. They 
had asked and obtained permission not to go 
downstairs to dinner, and a beardless negro with 
a grotesque over-fat face had brought them on a 
silver-gilt tray some food, which they had forgot- 
ten to eat. 

Downstairs, their grandmother, the Pasha, father 
of the bride, and Mademoiselle Bonneau de Saint- 
Miron ate without talking in the silence of catas- 
trophe. The old lady, more offended than ever 
at the conduct of her daughter’s daughter, knew 
well whom to blame, and abused modern education 
and the governess. She loved the child, a daughter 
of her impeccable Moslem race, but who had 
proved to be a sort of prodigal whose return to 
hereditary tradition was never to be hoped for; 
loved her in spite of all, though she had always 
felt that severity was a duty; and now, face to face 
with this wordless and incomprehensible rebellious- 
ness, she meant to be harder and sterner than ever. 
As to the Pasha, he, who had always petted and 
spoiled his only child like a Sultana of the Arabian 
Nights, and whg had been so sweetly loved by her 
in return, could understand her no better than his 
old ‘1320’ mother-in-law; indeed, he too was 
angry; this last caprice was really too much! 
To set up for a little martyr because, now that it 
was high time she should have a master, a hand- 
some young fellow had been chosen for her, rich, 
of good family, and in favour with His Imperial 
Majesty. And the hapless governess, guiltless at 
any rate of this betrothal, who had always been 
the confidential friend of her beloved pupil, sat in 


m1 DISENCHANTED 47 


silent consternation. Since she had been invited 
to the house for the wedding, why would the girl 
have none of her company up in her own rooms 
this last evening? 

No, the three fantastic little damsels — not 
dreaming, indeed, of the pain they gave her — had 
wished to be alone on the eve of such a separation. 

The very last, this, of their evenings together 
in the room which to-morrow would be deserted, 
and to which they must bid farewell! To make 
it a little more cheerful they had lighted all the 
wax candles in the candelabra, and the tall pillar 
lamp, with its shade in the newest fashion that 
year, as large as a parasol, and made of flower 
petals. And they went on turning over, sorting, 
and sometimes destroying a thousand trifles which 
they had long treasured as precious souvenirs. 
Here were the tufts of gold or silver thread with 
which it is the custom to deck the hair of a bride, 
and which the attendant maidens preserve till their 
turn comes; there were several of these, glittering 
where they were hung by knots of ribbon to the 
mirror-frames and the white walls, and they raised 
visions of the pale, pretty faces of friends now in 
durance, or perhaps dead. In a closet were the 
dolls they had once loved so dearly; broken toys, 
withered flowers, the sad little relics of their child- 
hood and early youth spent together within the 
walls of this old house. There were, too, in frames 
painted or embroidered by their own hands, photo- 
graphs of the ladies of the Embassies or of young 
Moslem ladies in evening dress; they would have 
passed for Frenchwomen of fashion but for the 


48 DISENCHANTED Il 


little scrawl below in Turkish characters, a senti- 
ment or a name. Finally, there were the dainty 
trifles won in past winters in the lotteries got up 
by Turkish ladies in the cause of charity during 
the long evenings of Ramazan; they were not of 
the very least value, still they recalled some past 
moments of the life which was ending to their 
acute sorrow. As to the wedding presents, some 
of which were splendid, arranged by Mademoiselle 
Bonneau, and displayed in an adjoining drawing- 
room, they did not care a fig about them. 

They had hardly ended their task when once 
more above the roofs came the sweet, clear voices 
calling the faithful to the fifth prayer of this last 
day. 

The three girls, to hear the better, seated 
themselves by the open window, and there inhaled 
the soft coolness of the night, smelling of cypress 
and aromatic herbs and the salt sea. “The window 
though open was of course barred, and besides the 
iron bars were screened by the all-pervading 
chequered lattice, through which alone a Turkish 
woman may look on the outer world. ‘The voices 
in the air still chanted their call near at hand, and 
others seemed to answer from afar, a host of 
others, ringing down from the tall minarets of 
Stamboul, and across the sleeping waters, borne 
on the hollow bass of the waves. It seemed 
indeed as if the sound came from the sky itself, 
a sudden outburst of clear voices calling, calling, 
in a very airy chant intoned on all sides at 
once. 

But it was soon over, and when all the 


Il DISENCHANTED 49 


Muezzins had sung out, each to the four points 
of the compass, the religious bidding of im- 
memorial tradition, utter silence suddenly fell. 
Stamboul now stood out between the thickly set 
black cypresses as a blue mass against a dimly 
moonlit sky, a filmy shape, larger than ever, a city 
of giant cupolas; and its ancient, unalterable silhou- 
ette sparkled with endless lights reflected in the 
waters of the gulf. The girls admired it, gazing 
through the tiny squares in the imprisoning screen ; 
they wondered whether the famous cities of the 
West, which they knew only from prints and would 
never see, since no Moslem woman is allowed 
to go out of Turkey, whether Vienna, Paris, or 
London could give such an impression of beauty 
and vastness. hey even put their fingers out 
through the lattice, as prisoners always do to 
amuse themselves, and a wild longing came over 
them to travel, to see the world — or merely once 
to take a walk by night, on such a night as this, 
through the streets of Constantinople — or even to 
go only so far as the cemetery, there beneath the 
window. But at night no Moslem woman may 
stir out. 

Silence, total silence, gradually enwrapt the old 
suburb of Kassim Pacha and its closely shut houses. 
Everything around them grew deadly still. The 
noise of Pera, where there is a life of the night as 
in European cities, died out before it could reach 
them. As to the strident howls of the steam- 
ships which lie in swarms under Seraglio Point, 
there is always respite from them even before the 
hour of the fifth prayer, for all navigation is 

E 


50 DISENCHANTED Il 


stopped on the Bosphorus as soon as it is dark. 
In this oriental hush, unknown to our towns, one 
sound alone was heard from time to time, a sound 
essentially characteristic of the night in Constan- 
tinople, resembling no other in the world, though 
for centuries the Turks have known it always the 
same: tap, tap, tap, tap, on the old pavements; 
a tap, tap made resonant by the funereal echoes 
of streets where no one passes along. This was 
the watchman of the district, who, making his 
slow rounds in slippers, struck the stones with his 
heavy iron-shod staff. In the distance other 
watchmen responded, doing the same; and the 
sounds rang out at no great distance apart 
throughout the vast city; from Eyoub to the 
Seven Towers, and along the shores of the 
Bosphorus, the sea of Marmora, and the Black 
Sea, saying to the inhabitants: ‘Sleep, sleep on; 
we are here open-eyed till morning, on the look- 
out for thieves or fire.’ 

Now and then the three girls forgot that this was 
the last evening. As so often happens just before 
the great crises of life, they allowed themselves to 
be deluded by the calm of long-familiar things; 
here, in this room, everything was in its place and 
looked as it was wont to look. But sudden 
reminders struck them each time with a death- 
chill; to-morrow the parting, the end of their 
sisterly intimacy, the fall and ruin of all the 
cherished past. 

Oh! that morrow! For her, the bride, a 
whole day when she must act a part, as custom 
demanded, and act it well, whatever it might cost 


Il DISENCHANTED 51 


her. A whole day when she must smile like an 
idol, smile at friends by the dozen, smile at the 
endless tribe of inquisitive gossips who, on the 
occasion of a grand wedding, invade the house. 
And then she must find pleasant things to say, 
receive congratulations with a grace, wear happy 
looks from morning till night, keep them set on 
her lips, in her eyes, in spite of revolt and terror. 
Yes, yes, she would smile through it all; her 
pride indeed required it of her; to be seen as 
victim would be too humiliating to her, the 
unsubdued spirit who had boasted that she would 
never be married against her will, who had 
preached to others the crusade of womanhood. 
But the morrow’s sun would rise on a day of 
irony and cruel fate. 

“And if only with the end of the day it might 
all be ended!’ said she. ‘But no; afterwards 
there will be months and years, a whole lifetime 
to be enslaved, spurned, tormented by this 
unknown owner. To think that not a day, not 
a night, will ever be my own again, and that 
simply because this man has had a fancy to marry 
the daughter of a Marshal of the Court!’ 

The gentle little cousins, as they saw her stamp 
with nervous vexation, suggested as a diversion 
that they should make some music for the last 
time. They all went together into the room 
where the piano had remained open. Here there 
were quantities of objects lying on the tables, the 
consoles, the rugs, which showed the mind of the 
modern Moslem woman eager to try everything 
in her seclusion, to possess and know everything. 


52 DISENCHANTED Il 


There was even a phonograph, with the latest 
improvements of that year; they had amused 
themselves with it for a few days, being intro- 
duced to the noises of a Western theatre, to the 
insipid music of an operetta, and the imbecilities 
of a café concert. But there were no memories 
bound up with these incongruous toys; they 
might stay where chance had dropped them, 
uncared-for lumber, the delight of the eunuchs 
and serving women. 

The bride, seated at the piano, hesitated for a 
moment; then she began a concerto of her own 
composition. Besides having studied harmony 
under excellent teachers, she had a vein of spon- 
taneous inspiration, often a little wild, and almost 
always delicately charming; now and then, per- 
haps, a reminiscence of the galloping Circassian 
horses on her native steppe, but no others. She 
went on to an unfinished nocturne, begun the 
previous evening; it opened with a sort of gloomy 
whirlwind, but the peace of the neighbouring 
cemeteries got the upper hand in the end. And 
a sound from outside was heard now and then, 
accentuating the music —the sound peculiar to 
Constantinople — the taps of the night-watchman’s 
stick in the reverberating silence, now as deep as 
that of the tomb. 

Zeyneb then sang to the accompaniment of her 
young sister Melek; like all Turkish women, she 
had a rich, rather tragical voice, which she infused 
with passion, especially in the fine deep notes. 
She, after hesitating too in her choice, opened a 
score by Gluck, and gave out magnificently the 


Il DISENCHANTED 53 


immortal invocation: Divinités du Styx, ministres 
de la Mort! 

The past generation lying in the cemeteries 
below, the Turks of old, sleeping among the roots 
of the cypress trees, must have been greatly 
astonished at this window open so late, and 
shedding a bright shaft of light on their gloomy 
domain; a harem window, no doubt, since it was 
latticed and barred, and from it came such 
melodies as were very strange to them. 

Zeyneb, however, had hardly ended the defiant 
words: ‘fe n’invoquerai point votre pitié cruelle, 
when the pianist stopped in alarm, striking a 
wrong chord. A human figure, which she was 
the first to perceive, stood by the piano; a tall, 
lean figure in dark draperies, who had appeared 
noiselessly like a ghost! 

It was not a Divinity of the Styx to be sure, 
but hardly more reassuring. Much of a muchness, 
to use the expression which had amused little red- 
haired Melek. It was Madame Husnugul, the 
terror of the household. ‘Your grandmother,’ © 
said she, ‘orders you to go to bed and put out the 
lights.’ And she went away as she had come 
without a sound, leaving them all three frozen with 
alarm. She had a gift of appearing always and 
everywhere without being heard; this is easier no 
doubt in a harem than anywhere else, since the 
doors are never shut. 

Madame Husnugul (the Beauty of the Rose) 
was a Circassian slave who, thirty years ago, had 
come to be almost one of the family, having borne 
a son to the Pasha’s brother-in-law. The child 


54 DISENCHANTED ill 


died, and she was given in marriage to an intendant 
in the country. Her husband presently died, and 
one fine day she made her appearance here again, 
on a visit, bringing quantities of clothes in blanket 
bags, in the old Turkish way. And this ‘visit’ 
had now lasted for nearly five-and-twenty years. 
Madame Husnugul, half lady-companion, half 
superintendent and spy over the young people, 
had become the right-hand of her former mistress ; 
she was a well-educated woman, and now, on her 
own account, visited all the ladies of the neighbour- 
hood; so complete is the feeling of indulgent 
equality i in Turkey that she was received even in 
the best circles. Many a family in Constantinople 
has under its roof a Madame Husnugul — or 
Gulchinassa (Handmaid of the Rose), or Chemsigul 
(Rose of the Sun), or Purkiémal (the Perfect), or 
something of that kind — who is always a scourge. 
But the old ‘1320’ ladies appreciate the services 
of these duennas, who accompany the young people 
when they go out and report on them when they 
come home. 

The orders transmitted by Madame Husnugul 
left no opening for discussion; the three unhappy 
girls silently closed the piano and blew out the 
candles. 

But before going to bed they threw themselves 
into each other’s arms for a final farewell; they 
wept for each other as if the events of the morrow 
meant eternal parting. For fear of bringing back 
Madame Husnugul, who was no doubt listening 
outside the door that stood ajar, they dared not 
speak; but as to sleeping, that was impossible, 


Il DISENCHANTED se 


and from time to time a sigh or a sob was heard 
from one of the little bursting hearts. 

The bride herself, in the deep stillness of the 
night, which favoured the prescience of despair, 
grew more and more distraught at the thought 
that every hour, every minute, brought her nearer 
to the culminating humiliation and disaster. 
With barbaric vehemence she now abhorred the 
stranger, whose face she had scarcely seen, but 
who would so soon and for ever be the irre- 
sponsible owner and master of her person. Since 
nothing was done yet, an overwhelming tempta- 
tion came over her to make some supreme 
attempt, no matter what, to escape him at all risks. 
But what, how? What human succour could she 
look for, who would have pity on her? It was 
too late to throw herself at her father’s feet; he 
would not yield now. 

It was near midnight; the moon shed its pale 
light into the room, its beams fell through the 
inexorable bars and lattice, outlining them on the 
white walls. They fell, too, on the text from the 
Koran over the little princess’s head, the ‘Ayet’ 
which every Moslem woman must have above her 
pillow. Her text was on bright green velvet, an 
antique and exquisite piece of embroidery in gold, 
designed by a famous writer of a past period, and 
the words, as mild as those of the Christian 
gospel, were these: ‘My sins are as great as the 
seas, but thy pardon, O Allah! is greater still.’ 

Long after the girl had ceased to believe, the 
holy words that guarded her slumbers had still 

1 Garih Bahr-i isyauim, Dahilek ya ressoul Allah. 


56 DISENCHANTED Ill 


had their influence on her soul, and she had 
retained a vague trust in supreme goodness, 
supreme forgiveness. And now —all was over; 
henceforth she looked for no mercy, however 
indefinite, either before death or after; no, she 
must suffer alone, protect herself unaided, and be 
alone responsible. So at this moment she felt 
prepared for extreme resolves. 

Again, then, what steps could she take? She 
had no weapon in her room, besides, such a 
solution of the difficulty would be too vulgar; 
and, indeed, what she craved for was to live! 
Then she must fly; but whither — and how? At 
midnight, at random, rushing through the terrify- 
ing streets? And where could she take refuge, 
not to be caught? 

Zeyneb meanwhile, who could not sleep, was 
saying something in a whisper. She had just 
remembered that it was the day of the week 
known to the Turks as Vazar-Ghuri, correspond- 
ing to our Sunday, on the eve of which day they 
pray for the dead as well as on the eve of Tchar- 
chembeh, corresponding to our Thursday. Now 
they had never omitted this duty; it was indeed 
one of the very few religious traditions of Islam 
which they still faithfully observed; for the rest, 
they were much like the other Moslem women of 
their generation and social rank, touched and 
scorched by the influence of Darwin and Schopen- 
hauer and other writers. Their grandmother 
would often say to them: ‘It is a sad thing in 
my old age to see that you have done worse than 
if you had been converted to Christianity, for 


III DISENCHANTED | ic 


after all God loves all who profess some religion. 
But you are really the infidels whose time, as the 
rophet so wisely foretold, was certain to come.’ 

Infidels they were indeed, more sceptical and 
hopeless than the average of girls in Western lands. 
But still, praying for the dead remained a duty 
they dared not fail in, and it was a soothing duty 
too. Even in the course of their walks in the 
summer, in the villages by the Bosphorus that 
have delicious graveyards under the shade of 
cypress and oak, they had often stopped to pray 
over some humble and nameless tomb. 

So they noiselessly lighted a very small night- 
light; the little bride took up her Koran, which 
lay on a console near her new-fangled bedstead — 
the Koran, always wrapped in a silk handkerchief 
from Mecca scented with sandal-wood, which 
every Moslem woman must keep by her pillow on 
purpose for these prayers that are said at night; 
and they all began to murmur in a low voice, 
becoming soothed as they went on, for prayer 
refreshed their spirit as cold water cools a fever. 

But in a few minutes a tall woman in dark 
draperies, as noiselessly as before, came in with no 
sound of opening doors, and like a spectre stood 
beside them: ‘Your grandmother orders you to 
put out the night-light.’ 

“Very well, Madame Husnugul. Have the 
kindness to put it out yourself, since we are in 
bed, and be good enough to explain to my 
grandmother that it was not out of disobedience — 
but we were reading the prayers for the dead.’ 

It was near two o'clock in the morning. 


58 DISENCHANTED Il 


When the night-light was extinguished, the three 
young creatures, exhausted by their emotions, 
their regrets, and their rebellious rage, went to 
sleep at once, sound, peaceful sleep, like the sleep 
of the condemned the night before the fatal 
morning. 


IV 


Four days later. The bride is in the heart of the 
very old and very lordly dwelling of her young 
master; alone in the room of the harem which 
has been given to her as her private sitting-room 
—a Louis XVI. drawing-room in pale blue and 
gold, freshly fitted and furnished for her. Her 
pink dress, imported from the Rue de la Paix, is 
of an impalpable material, looking like an envelop- 
ing cloud, in obedience to the fashion that spring, 
and her hair is dressed in the _last-invented 
fashion. In one corner is a white enamelled 
writing-table, very much like that in her room at 
Kassim Pacha, and the drawers can be locked, 
which was her dream. 

It might be a lady’s room in Paris, but for the 
lattices, of course, and the Moslem inscriptions 
embroidered on the loveliest old silks which adorn 
the walls here and there: the name of Allah and 
texts from the Koran. There is, to be sure, a 
throne, which would seem strange in Paris; her 
marriage throne, very splendid, and standing on a 
platform raised by two or three steps and covered 
with a canopy, from which hang curtains of blue 
satin richly embroidered with flowers in silver. 


And finally, here again is old Kondjé-Gul, any- 
59 


60 DISENCHANTED IV 


thing but Parisian in appearance; she sits by a 
window crooning in very low hum a song of her 
own black race. 

The Bey’s mother, the rather silly lady of 
*1320’ with her old pussy ways, has turned out 
to be in fact an inoffensive creature, rather kind, 
and who might be really excellent but for her 
blind idolatry of her son. She is_ entirely 
bewitched by the charms of her daughter-in-law, 
so much so, that only yesterday she came of her 
own accord to offer her the longed-for piano; 
post-haste, in a closed carriage, the bride, escorted 
by an eunuch on horseback, had crossed the 
Golden Horn to choose one in the best shop in 
Pera, and two relays of porters with poles to 
carry it had just been ordered to fetch it to- 
morrow morning, bearing it on their shoulders 
up to this elevated spot of rather difficult 
access. 

As to the young Bey—the enemy—the smart- 
est captain of the Turkish army, where so many 
officers wear the uniform smartly, he was certainly 
a very handsome fellow, with a soft voice, as 
Kondjé-Gul had said, and a somewhat feline smile 
inherited from his mother — he had hitherto, with 
the most refined delicacy, half sportively, half 
respectfully, paid his court most discreetly to his 
wife, whose superiority he fully appreciated, and, 
as is the rule in good society in the East, tried to 
win her affection rather than assert his rights. 
For, though a Moslem marriage is roughly 
handled and no consent invited before the cere- 
mony, after it, on the contrary, there is an 


Vv DISENCHANTED at 


amount of consideration and delicacy quite foreign 
to our Western manners. 

Hamdi Bey, on daily duty at the Yildiz 
palace, comes home every evening, is formally 
announced to his wife, and at first behaves as a 
visitor. After supper he takes a seat more inti- 
mately by her side on the sofa, and they smoke 
together thin, light-coloured cigarettes, while each 
studies and watches the other like fencers on 
guard; he tender and insinuating, with pauses 
full of suggestive agitation; she witty and brilliant 
so long as they merely chat together, but dis- 
arming him at once by an assumed slave-like 
submission if he attempts to draw her to him or 
to kiss her. Finally, when ten o’clock strikes, he 
withdraws, kissing her hand. If only she had 
chosen him, she would probably have loved him, 
but the little unbroken princess of the plain of 
Karadjemir will never bend to a master who is 
forced upon her. Besides, she knows full well that 
the moment is near and inevitable when her lord, 
instead of bowing himself out respectfully, will 
follow her to her room. She will not resist, far 
less entreat him. She has achieved the sort of 
duality of identity which is common to many 
Turkish women of her age and rank, who say: 
“My person is delivered over by contract to an 
unknown man, and [-devote it to him because I 
am an honest woman; but my soul, which was 
not consulted, is still my own, and I keep it with 
jealous reserve for an ideal lover — whom I may 
never meet with, and who in any case will never 
know anything about it.’ 


62 DISENCHANTED IV 


So she is at home alone all the afternoon, this 
young bride. 

To-day, while awaiting the return of the enemy 
from Yildiz, the idea occurs to her of continuing 
for André her interrupted diary, and to take it up 
at the fateful date of the 28th of Zil-Hidjeh 1318 
of the Hegira, the day of her marriage. ‘The earlier 
sheets are coming back to her to-morrow; she 
has asked the friend who took charge of them to 
return them, regarding her new bureau as safe 
enough to keep them in. 

She began to write. 

The 28th of Zil-Hidjeh 1318. 
April 19, 1901, in the Frankish calendar. 

‘My grandmother herself came to call me; I 
had gone to sleep so late that night. “Make 
haste,” said she; “you forget that you are to be 
ready by nine o’clock. You should not sleep so 
late on your wedding-day!” 

‘How stern was her tone! It was the last 
morning I was to know in her house in my own 
dear little room. Could she not avoid severity 
but for one day? On opening my eyes I saw 
my cousins, who had already risen noiselessly, and 
were putting on their tcharchaf to go home at 
once and make their toilet, which would be a long 
business. Never again should we all wake up 
together there, and once more we took a long 
farewell. We could hear the swallows piping in 
the joy of their hearts; we could feel that spring 
was radiant out of deat a bright day of sunshine 
had risen on my sacrifice; I felt like one drown- 
ing whom nobody would rescue. 


Iv DISENCHANTED 63 


“Before long the house was full of an infernal 
turmoil. Doors opening and shutting, bustling 
footsteps, the rustle of silk trains, women’s voices, 
and then the falsetto tones of the negroes, tears 
and laughter, sermonising and lamentations. In 
my room there was a perpetual coming and going; 
relations, friends, slaves, a whole rout of women 
offering their advice as to how the bride’s hair 
should be dressed. Every now and then a big 
negro in attendance called them to order, and 
besought us to make haste. 

“Nine o’clock; the carriages were ready, the 
procession waiting: my mother-in-law, sisters-in- 
law, and the young Bey’s guests. But the bride 
was not dressed; the ladies about her pressed their 
services upon her, but it was, in fact, their presence 
which complicated matters. At last, quite too 
nervous, she declined all help, and begged to be 
left to herself. She dressed her own hair, hastily 
put on her dress trimmed with orange-blossom 
and three yards of train, fastened her diamonds, 
her veil, and the long skeins of gold thread in her 
hair. Only one ornament she had no right to 
touch — her diadem. 

“The heavy diamond tiara, which with us takes 
the place of the wreath of flowers worn by 
Europeans, must, according to custom, be placed 
on her head by a young wife chosen from among 
her friends, who has been but once married, has 
not been divorced, and is notoriously happy in her 
wedded life. This chosen friend must first recite 
a short prayer out of the Koran, and then crown 
the bride, while expressing good wishes for her 


64 DISENCHANTED IV 


happiness, and more especially that she may thus 
be crowned once only in her life. In other words, 
you, André, will understand, no divorce, no second 
matriage. 

“Among the young women present one seemed 
so particularly fitted for this office that she was 
unanimously chosen — Djavideh, my very dear 
cousin. What had she not, that fortunate 
woman? Young, lovely, immensely rich, and 
married eighteen months since to a man who 
was reputed delightful! 

“But when she came up to me fo endow me with 
ber happiness, | saw two large tears in her eyes. 
“My poor darling,” said she, “why is this my 
part? I am not indeed superstitious, but I can 
never cease to regret having endowed you with my 
happiness. If in the future you should be doomed 
to suffer as I suffer, I shall feel as if it were my 
doing, my crime.” So she, too, apparently the 
happiest of us all, she too was in distress. Oh 
woe is me! Would no one hear my cry for 
mercy before I left that house? 

‘But the diadem was fixed; I said, “I am ready.” 
A tall negro came forward to carry the train of 
my dress, and I made my way along the passages 
to the stairs — those long corridors, watched night 
and day by women or slaves, and which lead to our 
rooms, André, so that we live in a mouse-trap. 

‘I was conducted downstairs to the largest of 
the reception rooms, where I found the whole 
family assembled. First there was my father, of 
whom I was to take leave. I kissed his hands. 
He made some appropriate speech, which I did 


IV DISENCHANTED 65 


not hear. I had indeed been enjoined to thank 
him publicly here for all his kindness in the past, 
and above all for that of to-day — the marriage he 
had arranged for me. But no, that was beyond 
my powers; I could not. I stood before him 
speechless, frozen, not looking up, and not a word 
could I utter. It was he who had concluded the 
bargain, who had surrendered me, ruined me; he 
was responsible for everything. How could I 
thank him when in the depths of my soul I cursed 
him? Was it possible — this fearful fact that I 
suddenly felt a mortal grudge against the being I 
once most dearly loved? Ah, it is an awful 
moment when the tenderest affection turns to the 
acutest hatred! And all the time I was smiling, 
André, because on one’s wedding day one is 
expected to smile. 

“While some old uncles were giving me their 
blessing, the ladies of the party, who had been 
having refreshments under the plane-trees in the 
garden, began putting on their tcharchaf. 

“The bride alone could not put one on, but 
negroes held up screens of damask silk to enclose 
a sort of passage and hide her from the eyes of 
the people in the street, between the door of the 
house and that of the closed landau with windows 
darkened by wooden shutters pierced with little 
holes. It was time to start, and I passed down 
between the silken walls. Zeyneb and Melek, my 
bridesmaids, both wearing blue dominos over their 
elegant dresses, followed me and got in with me, 
and there we were in a tightly closed case, im- 
penetrable to every eye. 

F 


66 DISENCHANTED IV 


‘After thus being put into the carriage, which 
to me seemed like being put into my hearse, there 
was a long pause. My mother-in-law and sisters- 
in-law, who had come to fetch me away, had not 
finished their glasses of sirop, and kept everybody 
waiting. Well, so much the better! It was so 
much gained, a quarter of an hour less sacrificed to 
the other. 

“However, the long line of carriages started at 
last, mine leading the way, and we began to jolt 
over the street pavement. My companions and I 
did not exchange a word. On we went in our 
dark cell, in perfect silence, seeing nothing. Oh 
how I longed to smash everything, to wreck every- 
thing, to fling open the doors, and cry to the 
passers-by, “Save me! I am being robbed of my 
happiness, my youth, my life!” I clenched my 
hands, I felt my face redden and the tears start to 
my eyes, while the two poor little things in front 
of me were stricken by my too evident misery. 

“Then there was a change of noise; the carriage 
was rumbling on wood, on the endless floating 
bridge over the Golden Horn. In fact I was 
going to live on the other shore. And then 
began the pavement of Stamboul, and I felt 
myself yet more abjectly a prisoner, for I must be 
rapidly approaching my new cloister, so abhorred 
in anticipation. What a long way through the 
town; by what endless streets we drove, up 
what impossible steeps! Heaven, how far away 
I should be, in what sinister exile! 

‘At last we stopped. The carriage door was 
opened. Ina flash I saw a waiting crowd in front 


IV DISENCHANTED 67 


of a gloomy doorway, negroes in uniform, cavasses 
blazing with gold lace and medals, intendants with 
the chalvar, down to the night-watchman with his 
long rod. And at once the silken screens stretched 
by stalwart arms, as at my departure, shut me in; 
I was again invisible, and again could see nothing. 
I rushed madly through this corridor of silk, and 
at the end found myself in a large hall full of 
flowers, where a fair young man in the full-dress 
uniform of a cavalry captain came forward to meet 
me. With smiles on our lips we exchanged an 
inquiring glance and a flash of intense defiance; 
it is over; I have seen my master, my master has 
seen me. 

“He bowed, offered me his arm, and conducted 
me to the first floor, to which I mounted as if 
dragged there; he led me to the end of a large 
drawing-room, where a throne stood raised on 
three steps. On this I seated myself, and he 
bowed again and went away; his part was over 
for the rest of the day. I watched him as he 
went; he met a tide of ladies pervading the stairs 
and rooms, a surge of light gauze, flowers, jewels, 
and bare shoulders; not a face was veiled nor the 
diamond-decked hair; every tcharchaf had been 
left at the door. It might have been a crowd of 
Western ladies in evening-dress, and the bride- 
groom, who had never before seen, and never 
again will see, such a sight, seemed to me dis- 
turbed in spite of his easy manner — the only man, 
drowned in this flood of women, and the object of 
interest to all these curious eyes. 

“His part was played, but I had to remain, the 


63 DISENCHANTED IV 


rare and curious creature on view all the day, on 
my seat of dignity. Near me on one side was 
Mademoiselle Esther, on the other were Zeyneb 
and Melek, who had also shed the tcharchaf, and 
were dressed in bodices open at the throat with 
flowers and diamonds. I implored them not to 
desert me while all the company passed before 
my throne, an interminable procession: relations, 
friends, mere acquaintances, each one asking me 
the exasperating question, “Well, my dear, what 
do you think of him?” How was I to know 
what I thought of him ? — a man whose voice I had 
scarcely heard, whose face I had scarcely glanced at, 
and whom I should not recognise in the street. 
Not a word could I find in reply; only a smile, 
since a smile is indispensable — or rather a grimace 
resembling a smile. Some of these women as they 
asked me had an ironical or sneering expression; 
these were the embittered and rebellious wives; 
others thought proper to assume an air of encourage- 
ment — the docile and resigned. But in the eyes 
of the rest I read most clearly a look of irremedi- 
able sadness, and pity for the sister who had fallen 
this day into the common pit, and become their 
comrade in humiliation and woe. And still my 
lips smiled. Marriage, then, was just what I had 
thought it. Now I knew. I read the truth in the 
eyes of each one of them all. And sitting there 
on my bridal throne I began to reflect that there is 
a way after all of getting free, a way permitted by 
Allah and the prophet: yes, I would get a divorce. 
Why had I not thought of it sooner? Isolated 
now in the midst of the crowd, and concentrating 


Iv DISENCHANTED 69 


my thoughts though still smiling, I eagerly plotted 
my new plan of campaign; I already counted on 
that blessed divorce; for, after all, a marriage in 
our country, if only one is bent upon it, is so easily 
undone. 

‘But after all, that procession was a pretty sight. 
I should really have been very much interested if 
I myself had not been the melancholy idol which 
all these women had come to stare at. Nothing 
to be seen but lace, gauze, bright and delicate 
colours. Not a black coat, of course, to make an 
inky spot, as at your European parties. And 
indeed, André, from the little I have seen of them 
at the Embassies, I do not think your entertain- 
ments can bring together so many charming faces 
as are seen at ours. All these Turkish women, 
never seen by men, are so slender, elegant, be- 
witching — as lithe as cats. I mean, of course, the 
women of this present generation — the least good- 
looking have something to attract; all are pleasing 
to behold. And then there are the old jap eo 0 tat 
ladies, mingling with the young whose eyes are 
deliciously melancholy or restless, the good old 
women, so amazing now with their placid grave 
looks, their superb hair in heavy plaits, never 
thinned by intellectual toil, their gauze turbans 
edged with flowers worked in crochet, and their 
rich silks, all purchased in Damascus, so as to put 
no profits into the hands of the infidel merchants 
of Lyons. 

“Now and again, when a guest of distinction 
came past me, [| had to rise and return her bow 
with one just as low as she had chosen to make to 


70 DISENCHANTED IV 


me,’ and if she were young, to beg her to be seated 
by me for a few minutes. 

“I really believe I was by this time beginning to 
be thoroughly amused, as though the procession 
of guests had been in honour of some one else, 
and I had nothing to do with it. The scene, in 
fact, had suddenly changed, and from my raised 
seat | was well placed to lose nothing of it. All 
the doors on to the street had been thrown wide 
open; all might enter who would; invited or no, 
any woman was admitted who wished to see the 
bride. And such extraordinary figures came in, 
utter strangers passing by, all in yashmak or 
tcharchaf, all spectres with their faces hidden in 
the way peculiar to the province they came from. 
The old houses in the neighbourhood, latticed and 
barred, were emptied of their residents or their 
chance inhabitants, and fine old materials had 
been brought out of every chest. There were 
women wrapped from head to foot in Asiatic 
silks curiously wrought with tinsel of gold or 
silver; there were gorgeous Syrians, and Persians 
robed entirely in black; there were even old 
women of a hundred leaning on their sticks. “A 
gallery of costume,” said Melek in a whisper, very 
much amused too. 

‘At four o’clock came the European ladies; 
this was the most unpleasant episode of the day. 
They were kept a long time at the refreshment 
tables, eating little cakes, drinking tea, and even 
smoking cigarettes, but at last they came on in a 
crowd towards the throne of the strange creature. 


1 The Temenan. 


IV DISENCHANTED 7p 


‘I must tell you, André, that they almost always 
have with them some foreign stranger for whose 
presence they apologise, some English or American 
tourist passing through, who is extremely excited 
by the idea of seeing a Turkish wedding. ‘This 
person comes in a travelling dress, perhaps even 
in Alpine climbing boots. With those haggard 
eyes which have looked down on the world from 
the summit of the Himalayas, or contemplated the 
midnight sun from the North Cape, she stares at 
the bride. As a crowning touch, my traveller, she 
whom fate had reserved for my wedding day, was 
a writer, a journalist, who had on her hands the 
dirty gloves she had worn on the steamship; 
impertinent and inquisitive, caring only for copy 
for a newly started paper, she asked me the most 
astounding questions with absolute want of tact. 
My humiliation was complete. 

“Very disagreeable and odious were the ladies 
of Pera, who came extravagantly over-dressed. 
They had been to fifty weddings at least, and 
knew exactly how everything should be done. 
This, however, did not hinder them from asking 
the stupidest, ill-natured questions. 

““Of course you are not yet acquainted with 
your husband? It really is very funny, you 
know! What a strange custom! But, my dear 
child, you ought to have cheated, just cheated ! 
And you did not, really and truly, no? Well, I 
can only say that 1 in your place I should simply 
have refused him.” 

“And as she spoke she exchanged satirical 
glances with a Greek lady by her side, a Perote 


72 DISENCHANTED IV 


too, and giggled compassionately. I smiled to 
order all the time, but I felt as if these rude 
minxes were slapping my cheeks till the blood 
came. 

‘At last all were gone, all the intruders in 
tcharchafs or in hats. Only the invited guests 
remained. 

“The candelabra and lamps that were now 
lighted illuminated none but the most splendid 
dresses — none black, since there were no men; 
none dark or sober, a crowd of beautiful and 
varied colours. I do not believe, André, that you 
in the West ever see such an effect; at any rate, 
what I used to see at the Embassies when I was a 
little girl did not come near this in brilliancy. 
Mingling with the exquisite Asiatic silks displayed 
by the grandmothers, there were quantities of Paris 
dresses that looked even more diaphanous; they 
might have been made of blue or pink mist. All 
the latest creations of your famous dressmakers (to 
use their imbecile phraseology), worn to perfection 
by these little ladies, whose governesses have trans- 
formed them into French women, or Swiss, or 
English, or Germans, but whose names are, never- 
theless, Khadija, or Tcheref, or Fatima, or Gulizar, 
and on whom no man has ever set eyes ! 

‘I was now allowed to come down from my 
throne, where I had been perched for five or six 
hours; I might even leave this blue drawing-room, 
where the old ladies were for the most part 
assembled, the “ 1320” fanatics and scorners, severe 
and rigid of spirit under their flat braids of hair 
and small turbans. I wanted rather to join the 


IV DISENCHANTED 73 


throng of young women, the “unbalanced” like 
myself, who were crowding now into an adjoining 
room where a band was playing. 

‘It was a stringed orchestra accompanying six 
singers, who took it in turn to recite passages of 
poems by Zia Pasha, Hafiz, or Saadi. You, 
André, know how melancholy and impassioned is 
our oriental music; indeed you yourself have 
tried to express it, though it cannot be put into 
words. The musicians — men — were hermetically 
screened off by a vast curtain of Damascus silk; 
only think of the scandal if one of them should 
get a glimpse of us! And my friends, when I 
joined them, had just arranged a séance of fortune- 
telling by song. ‘This is a sort of game played at 
wedding parties where there is a band. One says, 
“The first song shall be for me”; another says, 
“T will take the second,” or the third, and so on. 
And each regards the words of her song as pro- 
phetic of her fate. 

‘The bride will take the fifth,” said I as I 
went in. And when the fifth was to be sung all 
came close, eager not to miss a word, their ear 
against the silken screen, leaning on it at the risk 
of bringing it down. 


*“T who am Love 
—the voice of the invisible singer recited — 


burn with too fierce a fire. 
Even if only I pass and touch the soul 
Life is not long enough to close and heal the wound. 
I pass, but my touch for ever leaves its mark. 
I who am Love burn with too fierce a fire.” 


714 DISENCHANTED Iv 


‘How rich and thrilling was the voice of this 
man, whom I felt quite near, but who remained 
hidden, so that I might attribute to him any 
features, form, and eyes that I chose to fancy. 
I had come in to amuse myself like the others; 
the oracle so often suggests some absurd inter- 
pretation that it is hailed with laughter in spite of 
the beauty of the words. But this time the per- 
former had sung too well, with too much passion. 
The girls did not laugh — no, not one of them, — 
but looked at me. For my part, I felt as I had 
felt in the morning, that my youth was buried that 
day. Yes, in one way or another, I would be 
separated from the man to whom I was delivered 
over, and I would live my own life elsewhere, 
where I knew not, and I would seek and find 
“Love burning with too fierce a fire.” And 
everything was transfigured before me in the room, 
where I ceased to be aware of the women who 
crowded round me; the mass of flowers in the 
large vases seemed suddenly to fill the air with 
heavy perfume, and the crystal chandeliers to 
beam like stars. Whether from fatigue or ecstacy 
I did not know, but my head swam. I saw no 
one, nor what was going on around me, and I felt 
indifferent to everything, because I now knew 
that some day in the course of my life I should 
find Love — and if I die of it, so much the worse! 

‘A minute later — a minute or a long time, I 
know not which — my cousin Djavideh, the same 
who in the morning had “set her happiness” on 
my head, came up to me. “Why, you are all 
alone! The others are gone down to supper, and 


IV DISENCHANTED 15 


are waiting for you. What can you have been 
doing to absorb you so ?”’ 

‘It was true; I was alone; the room was 
empty. The others had gone. When? I had 
not even perceived it. 

‘Dyjavideh had with her she negro who was to 
bear my train and cry “Destour” as I went, for 
every one to make way. She took my arm, and 
as we went down the stairs she asked me in a low 
voice, “My dear, tell me the truth I entreat you, 
of whom were you dreaming when I came up ?”’ 

“Of André Lhery.” 

“Of André Lhéry? No! You are mad or 
making game of me. Of André Lhéry! Then 
what I was told of your fancy for him was true.’ 
She was laughing now, quite satisfied. “Well, so 
far as he is concerned, at any rate, it is certain 
there is no fear of your meeting. But in your 
place I should indulge in a better dream than 
that. Why, I have been told that there are 
charming men up in the moon. You might work 
out that idea, my dear. A moon-man, it seems to 
me, would be the very thing for a little lunatic 
like you.” 

“We had to go down about twenty steps, gazed 
at by those who were waiting for us at the bottom 
of the stairs; the trains of our gowns, one white 
and the other lilac, were held together in the 
gloved hands of our ape. Fortunately, my dear 
Djavideh’s moon-man — such an unexpected sug- 
gestion, made me laugh as she did, and our faces 
both wore the appropriate expression as we entered 
the supper-rooms. 


76 DISENCHANTED IV 


“At my request the younger ladies were seated 
at tables apart; round the bride there were about 
fifty guests under five-and-twenty, almost all of 
them pretty. Also, by my desire, the cloth was 
decorated with white roses laid closely side by side, 
without leaves or stems. You know, André, it is 
no longer the custom here to lay the table in the 
Turkish manner; here were French silver plate, 
Sévres porcelain, and Bohemian glass, all bearing 
my new initials; our old oriental magnificence 
was not to be seen at this marriage feast, excepting 
in the array of silver candlesticks, all alike, which 
were placed all round the table, touching each 
other, like the roses. I forgot, to be sure, the 
crowd of slaves who waited on us, fifty of them 
at least in one room for the young people alone; 
all Circassian girls of the best type and wonderfully 
pleasant to look upon: calm, fair beauties, moving 
with a sort of native majesty, like princesses. 

‘Among the Turkish ladies seated at my table 
— most of them of middle height and fragile grace, 
with brown eyes — some ladies of the Imperial 
palace who had come, the “Serailis,” were dis- 
tinguished by their goddess-like stature, lovely 
shoulders, and sea-blue eyes. “These also were Cir- 
cassians, daughters of the mountain or the plain, 
of labourers or of shepherds, purchased as children 
for their beauty, and after serving many years as 
slaves in some seraglio, turned by the touch of a 
wand into great ladies of amazing elegance by 
marrying some chamberlain or other magnate. 
They look down with pity, these splendid women, 
on the little city-bred ladies with frail forms, dark 


IV DISENCHANTED 77 


lines round their eyes, and wax-like skins; they 
callthem degenerate. It is their function — theirs, 
and that of thousands of their sisters brought here 
every year to be sold — to bring into the old worn- 
out city an infusion of their rich, pure blood. 

“The company was extremely gay. They talked 
and laughed at everything. A wedding supper 
among Turkish women is always an occasion for 
forgetting trouble, for relaxation and enjoyment. 
Besides, André, we are gay by nature, I assure 
you; if the merest trifle leads us to forget our 
restrictions, our daily humiliations and sorrows, 
we plunge very readily into childlike, heedless 
laughter. I have heard that it was so in the 
convents of the West, the most strictly secluded 
nuns sometimes playing and amusing themselves 
with the sports of a little girls’ school. And a 
French woman of the Embassy, on the eve of 
returning to Paris, said to me one day: “‘It is all 
over; never again shall I laugh so heartily, and so 
innocently too, as in your harems at Constantinople.” 

“The supper being ended with a toast to the 
bride’ s health, the ladies at my table proposed to 
give the Turkish orchestra a respite and to play 
some European music. They were most of them 
good pianists, and some of them quite admirable; 
their fingers, which have so much time for practis- 
ing, generally achieve the most faultless execution. 
Beethoven, Grieg, Liszt, and Chopin are familiar 
to them, and in singing, Wagner, Saint-Saéns, 
Holmés, or even Chaminade. 

“Alas! I was obliged to confess with a blush 
there was not a piano in the house. Amazement 


78 DISENCHANTED IV 


indeed among my guests, and they looked at 
me as if they would say: “Poor little thing! 
They must be ‘1320’ indeed in her husbands’ 
family. Life in this house promises to be very 
enjoyable!” 

“Eleven o’clock. We hear the horses of the 
fine carriages pawing the horribly dangerous pave- 
ments, and the steep old street is full of negroes in 
livery carrying lanterns. The guests are putting 
on their veils and preparing to depart. The hour 
was in fact very late for Moslem women, and but 
for the exceptional event of a grand wedding they 
would not be out. They began to take leave, and 
the bride, still eternally standing, must curtsey and 
thank each lady for having “‘condescended to be 
present at this humble entertainment.” *When my 
grandmother in her turn came up to bid me good- 
bye, her satisfied expression clearly said: “At last 
we have married off this fantastic girl. What a 
good thing done!” 

“They were all gone, I was left alone in my 
new prison; there was nothing now to stun my 
brain. I was left to the reflection that the irre- 
mediable deed was done. 

‘Zeyneb and Melek, my beloved little sisters, 
had remained till the end, and came now to kiss me 
last; we dared not look at each other for fear of 
tears. Then they also were gone, dropping their 
veils over their faces. It was all over; I was 
sunk in an abyss of loneliness, of the unknown. 
Still, I had found the will to escape from it. I 
was more alive this evening than I had been 
i’ the morning, and ready for the struggle, for 


Iv DISENCHANTED 79 


I had heard the call of ‘‘Love of the too fierce 
fire.” 

‘At this point I was informed that the Bey, my 
husband, in the blue drawing-room upstairs had 
been waiting for some minutes for the pleasure 
of a few words with me. He had just come in 
from my father’s house at Kassim Pacha, where 
there had been a dinner given to men. Well 
and good! I too was eager to see him and to 
face him. I went up with a smile on my lips, 
armed with craftiness, and determined to amaze 
him, to dazzle him at first, but my spirit was 
seething with hatred and schemes of revenge. . . .’ 


A rustle of silk behind her and quite close to 
her made her start; her mother-in-law had come 
in with the velvet footfall of an old cat. Happily 
she could not read French, being quite of the old 
school, and, moreover, she had forgotten her eye- 
glasses. 

‘Come, my dear child, you really write too 
much! You have been sitting at this table for 
very nearly three hours. I have been in several 
times already on tiptoe. Our Hamdi will be 
coming in from Yildiz, and your pretty eyes will 
be quite heavy to receive him. Come, come, rest 
a little; put those papers away till to-morrow.’ 

She needed _ no asking to put away the papers, 
to lock them quickly by in a drawer — for 
another figure had just appeared at the door of 
the room — one who could read French and had 
piercing eyes: the fair Durdaneh (the Pearl), a 
cousin of Hamdi Bey’s, who was lately divorced 


80 DISENCHANTED IV 


and had been staying in the house for two days. 
Her eyes were touched with henna, her hair was 
dyed with henna, her face was too pretty, but her 
smile malignant. The bride had already felt that 
she was perfidious. It was quite unnecessary to 
warn her to look her best when Hamdi should 
come in, for she was vanity itself, especially in the 
presence of her handsome cousin. 

“Here, my dear child,’ the old lady went on, 
giving her a worn jewel-case; ‘I have brought you 
a necklace of my young days; it is oriental, so you 
cannot say that it is out of fashion, and it will look 
well on the dress you are wearing to-day.’ 

It was a fine old necklace, and she put it round 
the girl’s neck; emeralds, of which the green 
harmonised delightfully with the pink costume. 

‘It suits you, my child! It suits you to perfec- 
tion. Our Hamdi, who has such a ttaste in 
colours, will think you irresistible this evening.’ 

She herself, she must own, was anxious that 
Hamdi should think her attractive, for she relied 
on her charms as her chief weapon in rebellion and 
revenge. But nothing could humiliate her more 
deeply than the mania they all had for dressing 
her up from morning till night. ‘My dear child, 
just put that lock of hair a little higher — there — 
above your ear. Hamdi will think you prettier 
than ever. My dear child, put this tea-rose in 
your hair. It is our Hamdi’s favourite flower.’ 
Treated all the time as an odalisque, a beautiful 
doll for her lord’s greater enjoyment. 

Blushing scarlet, she had scarcely thanked the 
old lady for the emerald necklace, when a huge 


IV DISENCHANTED 81 


negro in attendance came to announce that the 
Bey was in sight; he was coming on horseback 
and had turned the corner of the mosque hard by. 
His mother rose at once. ‘We have only time 
to make a retreat, Durdaneh, you and I. We 
must not be in the way of the new-married couple, 
my dear.’ They fled like two Cinderellas, and 
Durdaneh, looking back from the door before 
she disappeared, bestowed on her a spiteful parting 
smile. j 

The bride went to look in a glass. The other 
day she had arrived at her husband’s home, as 
white as her dress and train, as pure as the water 
of her diamonds; throughout her former life, 
wholly devoted to study, secluded from contact 
with young men, no sensual idea had ever even 
crossed her imagination. But Hamdi’s increas- 
ingly tender courtship, the wholesome savour of 
the man, the smoke of his cigarettes were beginning, 
in spite of herself, to arouse in her a nervous excite- 
ment which she had never dreamed of. 

On the stairs the click of a cavalry sword — he 
- was coming, close at hand; and she felt the hour 
was near when their two ‘personalities would be 
merged i in such intimate communion as she could 
not picture to herself. And now, for the first 
time, she was aware of an unconfessed wish for 
his presence — and the shame of wishing for any- 
thing this man could give her aroused in her spirit 
a fresh impulse of rebellion and. aversion. 


V 


THREE years later; 1904. 

André Lhéry, who was loosely and _inter- 
mittently connected with the Embassies, had, after 
much hesitation, just asked for and obtained an 
appointment for about two years at Constantinople. 
He had hesitated, in the first place, because any 
official position means a chain, and he clung to his 
freedom; also because two years of absence from 
his own country seemed to him longer now than it 
had been of yore, at a time when almost all his 
life lay like a high road before him; and above 
all, because he dreaded the disenchantment of 
modernised Turkey. 

However, he made up his mind to it; and one 
March morning, in gloomy wintry weather, a ship 
had landed him on the quay of the city he had 
loved so well. 

At Constantinople the winter lingers long. 
The wind, blowing from the Black Sea was wild 
and icy that day, driving flakes of snow before it. 
In the squalid cosmopolitan district where the 
vessels discharge their passengers, in itself a sort 
of warning to newcomers to depart quickly, the . 
streets were gutters of sticky mud, through which 
Levantines and mangy dogs splashed their way. 

82 


Vv DISENCHANTED 83 


And André Lhéry, sick at heart, his imagination 
stricken, took his seat like a condemned criminal in 
the vehicle which conveyed him up streets almost 
impossibly steep, to the most commonplace of the 
hotels designated as ‘ Palaces.’ 

Pera, where his position compelled him to 
reside, is a lamentable sham of an European city, 
separated by an arm of the sea, to say nothing of 
many centuries, from grand old Stamboul, the 
city of mosques and of our dreams. ‘There, not- 
withstanding his impulse to fly, he was fain to find 
a residence. He perched himself as high as he 
could go in the least pretentious quarter of the 
town, not only to remove himself as far as possible 
from the smart Perote set that lived and moved 
below, but also to enjoy the vast prospect, to see 
from every window the Golden Horn with the 
mass of Stamboul projected against the sky, 
_and, breaking the horizon, the solemn array of 
cypresses, the great cemeteries, where for twenty 
years now the unknown Circassian girl who had 
been the friend of his youth lay sleeping under a 
fallen stone. 

The costume of Turkish women had changed 
since his first stay. here. This was one of the 
things that first struck him. Instead of the white 
shroud which showed only the eyes, and which 
was known as the yashmak, and the long straight 
mantle of some light hue called the feridjeh, they 
now wore the tcharchaj, a sort of domino, almost 
always black, with a short veil, also black, con- 
cealing all the features, even the eyes. Doabe 
sure, they occasionally raised this veil, showing the 


84 DISENCHANTED Vv 


whole oval of the face, which to André Lhéry 
seemed a revolutionary innovation. But for this, 
they were, as of old, spectres, with whom one rubs 
elbows, but with whom all communication 1s 
prohibited, and at whom one 1s forbidden to look 
—recluses of whom one can learn nothing — 
unknowable, non-existent one might say, the 
mystery and charm of Turkey. 

André Lhéry, long ago, by a series of happy fa- 
vouring chances impossible to recombine a second 
time in one man’s life, had, with the audacity of a 
boy who knows nothing of danger, been thrown 
into contact with one of them — contact so close 
that he had left a piece of his soul clinging to her 
forever. But as for repeating any such adventure, 
he never even dreamed of it for a thousand reasons; 
he saw them pass as one sees shadows or the clouds. 

The wind off the Black Sea blew incessantly 
for some weeks, and the cold rain or snow con- 
tinually fell, and acquaintances invited him to dine 
and to evenings at the clubs. And he began to 
feel that this world, this life, was not only making 
his new visit to the East an empty and disturbing 
thing, but also threatened to destroy his past 
impressions, perhaps even to blur the image of his 
poor little sleeping friend. Since his arrival in 
Constantinople his remembrance grew less vivid 
every hour, drowned out by the pervading vulgar 
modernity; he felt that the people about him 
profaned it, trampled on it every day. So he 
decided to go away. The loss of his appointment 
at the Embassy, it need hardly be said, was a 
secondary consideration. He would go. 


‘ 


v DISENCHANTED 85 


Since his arrival, nearly a fortnight ago, a 
thousand unimportant matters had so filled up his 
leisure that he had not even crossed the bridges 
over the Golden Horn to go into Stamboul. ‘The 
great city, which he could see from the top of his 
house, generally wrapped in the persistent winter 
fog, was still almost as remote and unreal as 
before his return to Turkey. He would go away 
— that was finally settled. Just time to make a 
pilgrimage over there, to Nedyibeh’s grave under 
the cypresses, and then, leaving all else, he would 
return to France. Out of regard for the beloved 
past, and pious respect for ber, he would escape 
before the disenchantment was complete. 


The day, when at last he could set foot in 
Stamboul, was one of the most dismally cold and 
dark days of the year, though it was in the month 

of April. 

On the other side of the water, as soon as he 
had crossed the bridge and stood in the shadow of 
the great mosque beyond, he felt himself another 
man, the André Lhéry who had been dead for 
years, and who had suddenly revived to youth and 
consciousness. Alone, free, unknown to any one 
in the crowd, he knew every nook and turning of 
the city as though he had come back to a former 
existence. Forgotten Turkish words rose up in 
his memory, phrases formed in his brain, he once 
more belonged to the place — really belonged to 
Stamboul. 

At once he was uncomfortable in wearing a 
hat, almost felt himself ridiculous. Less from a 


86 DISENCHANTED Vv 


foolish shyness than from the fear of attracting 
the attention of some watchman in the cemetery, 
he bought a fez, which, according to custom, was 
carefully pressed to the size of his head, in one of 
the hundred little street shops. He also bought a 
rosary to carry in his hand like a good Moslem. 
And now, suddenly in a hurry and excessively 
impatient to see the tomb, he jumped into a little 
carriage and said to the coachman, ‘Edirneh 
Kapoussouna ghetir’ (‘Drive to the Adrianople 
gate’). It was a very long way to the Adria- 
nople gate in the great Byzantine wall, beyond 
quarters of the city now being abandoned, through 
streets dying of inanition and silence. He had to 
cross almost the whole of Stamboul, and first to 
climb steep lanes where the horses slipped and 
slid. At first these were the swarming parts of 
the town, full of street cries and things to sell, all 
round the bazaar and familiar to tourists. “Then 
came the sort of steppes, deserted to-day in the 
icy wind, which occupy the central plateau, where 
the eye sees minarets and cupolas on every side. 
And at last the roads bordered with tombs 
and funereal kiosks and delicious fountains — the 
avenues of old where nothing had changed; the 
great mosques one after another with their clustered 
cupolas, dimly grey against the still wintry sky; 
their vast enclosures full of the dead, and their 
squares with the old-world little cafés where the 
dreamy worshippers assemble after prayer. It 
was the hour when the muezzins call the faithful 
to the third service of the day; their voice came 
dropping from above, from the light balconies so 


oe DISENCHANTED 87 


high up that they seemed close to the cold, gloomy 
clouds. Ah, Stamboul still existed! André 
Lhéry, finding it as he had known it, and shivering 
with an indescribable and delicious pang, felt 
himself going back by degrees to his own youth; 
he was more and more like a being brought to life 
again after years of oblivion and non-existence. 
And it was she, the little Circassian, whose body 
was now destroyed in the earth, who had preserved 
the power of casting a spell over this land — she 
who was the cause of all this, and who at this 
moment reigned triumphant. 

As by degrees they drew near to the Adrianople 
gate, which leads out on the endless stretch of 
cemeteries, the street became very quiet, running 
between old barred houses and old crumbling 
walls. In consequence of the bitter wind no one 
was sitting in front of the humble cafés, almost in 
ruins. But the inhabitants of the quarter, the 
rare passers-by, who looked frozen, still wore the 
old-fashioned long gown and turban. A dejection 
as of universal death seemed that day to be exhaled 
by all earthly things, to be shed from the murky 
sky, to pervade everything—an intolerable sadness, 
a melancholy to weep over. 

Having arrived under the horseshoe arch of 
the city gate, André prudently dismissed his 
vehicle and passed out alone into the country — 
that is to say, into the wide region of neglected 
tombs and ancestral cypresses. To right and left 
along the colossal wall, its half-ruined dungeon 
towers visible in long perspective, there were only 
tombs, endless gravestones sunk in solitude, and, 


88 DISENCHANTED Vv 


as it were, drunk with silence. Assuring himself 
that the driver had gone away, and that no one 
would follow and spy upon him, André turned to 
the right and went downhill towards Eyoub, walk- 
ing under the huge cypresses, with their branches 
as white as dry bones and almost black foliage. 

Tombstones in Turkey are like milestones, with 
turbans or flowers carved at the top, at a distance 
vaguely like human beings with a head and 
shoulders; in the first instance they are planted 
upright and quite straight, but in the course of 
time earthquakes and heavy rains undermine them; 
then they lean in every direction, one against 
another, like dying creatures, and at last fall on 
the grass, where they lie at rest. And the very 
ancient cemeteries where André was now wander- 
ing have the melancholy disarray of a battlefield 
the morning after a defeat. 

There was hardly any one to be seen to-day 
along by this wall in the vast realm of the dead. 
It was too cold. A goatherd with his flock, a 
troop of prowling dogs, two or three old beggar 
women awaiting a funeral procession to beg alms 
—no other creature, no eye to be feared. But 
the tombstones in their thousands were like a 
watching crowd, a crowd of stunted grey people 
tottering and drooping. And the crows hopping 
in the grass began to caw in the wintry wind. 

André, guiding himself by landmarks once 
familiar, made his way to the resting-place of her 
whom he had called ‘Medjeh,’ among so many 
others almost exactly alike which covered this 
wilderness from end to end. It was one of the 


Vv DISENCHANTED 89 


little group out there; he recognised the growth 
and shape of the cypress trees. And it was this 
one, this very one, in spite of its look of being a 
hundred years old, this one with the uprooted 
stone lying prone on the earth. How quickly 
destruction had done its work since he last was 
here, hardly five years ago. Not even these 
humble stones would ‘Time leave to the poor little 
dead thing, so utterly lost in oblivion by this 
time, that perhaps not a soul in the place re- 
remembered her at all. In his memory alone and 
nowhere else did the youthful image survive, and 
when he should die, not the faintest impression 
would remain anywhere of what her beauty had 
been, not a trace in all the world of her anxious 
artless soul. On the headstone sunk in the grass 
no one would ever read her name — her real name, 
which, indeed, would have ceased to mean anything. 
In former days he had often thought himself pro- 
faning her by revealing, though under an invented 
name, something of her being to a thousand in- 
different readers in a too unreserved book which 
ought never to have seen the light; but to-day, 
on the contrary, he was glad he had done this, for 
the sake of the pity it had aroused for her, a pity 
which it might yet arouse for some few years to 
come in souls unknown to him; nay, he was sorry 
that he had not given her real name, for then, he 
fancied, all that pity would have more immediately 
touched the beloved little spirit. And, who knows? 
one or another of her Turkish sisters, passing by 
the fallen stone, as she read the name might have 


paused to think of the dead. 


go DISENCHANTED Vv 


The light faded rapidly this evening over the 
expanse of graves, the sky was so overcast with 
piled-up clouds without a rift anywhere. Under 
the wall —the ruins of this endless wall which 
seemed to be that of a city of the dead —the 
solitude grew acute, terrifying; a vast expanse of 
grey monochrome, with scattered cypress trees, 
and peopled, as it were, with small, decrepit figures, 
some standing, some leaning over, and some fallen 
—the memorial stones. And for years she had 
slept here, that Circassian girl who had once trusted 
that her friend would return; slept through the 
winters and summers, and would lie there for ever, 
alone in the silence, alone during the long December 
nights under her winding-sheet of snow. Now, 
indeed, there could be nothing of her there. But 
he shuddered at the thought of what she still 
might be, so close to him under the coverlet of 
earth; no, certainly nothing, a few bones crumbling 
still amid the deeper roots, and that globular thing, 
more slow to decay, which represented the head, 
the spherical cell in which her soul had dwelt, her 
loving thoughts. 

The wreckage of this tombstone really enhanced 
his heart-broken attachment and remorse; he could 
not bear it, he could not endure to leave it thus. 
Being so familiar with the country he knew what 
difficulties and dangers beset the Christian who 
should touch the tomb of a Moslem woman in a 
holy cemetery. He would have to employ all the 
cunning of a criminal, in spite of his pious purpose. 
However, he decided that it must be done. He 
would remain in Turkey for so long as might be 


y DISENCHANTED gi 


needful, for months if necessary, and would not 
leave till the broken stones were renewed and the 
tomb restored and consolidated to last. 

On his return to Pera in the evening he found 
Jean Renaud in his rooms, one of his friends at 
the Embassy, a very young man, who was amazed 
at all he saw here, and with whom he had become 
intimate on the ground of their common admira- 
tion for everything Eastern. 

He also found the French mail lying on his 
table, and a letter with the Stamboul postmark, 
which he at once opened. 

This was the letter: 


“Str — Do you remember that a Turkish woman 
once wrote to you to tell you of the emotions stirred 
in her soul by reading “‘ Medjeh,” and to beg for a 
few words in reply written by your own hand? 

“Well, this Turkish woman has grown ambitious, 
and now wishes for something more. She wants to 
see you, to know the delightful author of that book 
which she has re-read a hundred times, and always 
with increasing emotion. Will you consent to a 
meeting on Thursday at half-past two by the 
Bosphorus, on the Asiatic side between Tchiboukli 
and Pacha Bagtcheh? You could wait for me in 
the little café near the sea at the head of the bay. 

‘I shall come in a dark tcharchaf, in a talika.' 
I will get out of the carriage, and you will follow 
me, but you must wait till I speak first. You 
know my country, so you know the risks I run. 


1A Turkish hired coach, commonly used in the country ; it is also called a 
mohadjir. 


92 DISENCHANTED Vv 


For my part I know I have, in you, to deal with 
a gentleman. I trust in your discretion. 
‘But perhaps you have forgotten “Medjeh”? 
Perhaps you are no longer interested in her sisters ? 
“If, however, you care to read the soul of 
the “Medjeh” of to-day answer me —and till 
Thursday. Mme. ZAIDEH. 


* Poste-restante, Galata.’ 


He laughed as he handed this letter to his 
friend and took up the others. 

“Take me with you on Thursday,’ implored 
Jean Renaud, as soon as he had read the note. ‘I 
will be very good,’ he added in a childlike way, 
‘very discreet. I will not look 

“Do you really suppose I am going, my boy ?’ 

‘Oh! what, miss such a thing? But you will 
go, surely ?’ 

‘Not if I know it! It is some trick. The 
lady is no more Turkish than you or I.’ 

Though he made difficulties, it was chiefly that 
he might let himself be overruled by his young 
companion, for in his heart, though he was still 
opening his letters, he was thinking more of the 
lady than he chose to show. Preposterous as the 
assignation might be, he felt the same unreasonable 
attraction that, three years ago, when he received 
her first letter, prompted him to reply. Besides, 
what a strange thing it seemed that the appeal 
should come to him in the name of ‘Medjeh,’ on 
this very evening when he had but just come in 
from his visit to the cemetery, with his soul so 


deeply moved by her memory. 





VI 


On Thursday April 14, rather before the appointed 
hour, André Lhéry and Jean Renaud had taken 
their seats in front of the little café, which they 
easily recognised on the seashore on the Asiatic 
side, between the two hamlets named by the 
mysterious Zaideh. It was one of the few solitary 
and still wild nooks by the Bosphorus, which almost 
everywhere now is hemmed by houses and palaces; 
the lady had chosen well. Beyond lay a deserted 
field with a few plane-trees three or four hundred 
years old — Turkish plane-trees with prop-roots 
like the baobab — and close by, sloping down from 
the heights to the quiet strand, an outlying spur 
of the forests of Asia Minor, which still harbour 
brigands and bears. 

An ideal spot certainly for a clandestine meet- 
ing. The men were alone in front of the ruined 
and perfectly isolated building in which the café 
was kept by a humble old fellow with a white 
beard. The plane-trees had scarcely yet uncurled 
their leaves, but the meadow was already so bright 
with flowers, and the sky so beautiful, that it was 
strange to feel the icy wind blowing without 
ceasing — the almost perpetual wind from the Black 
Sea, which spoils the spring in Constantinople. 

93 


94 DISENCHANTED VI 


Here, on the Asiatic shore, there was as usual 
some shelter from it, but opposite, on the European 
shore, it was blowing hard, though the thousand 
houses with their feet in the water were basking in 
the sunshine. 

They awaited the appointed hour in this lonely 
spot, smoking the humble narghilehs which the old 
Turk produced for their use, though he was 
astonished and almost suspicious of two fine gentle- 
men in hats who had condescended to his shop 
for boatmen or shepherds, in unsettled weather 
and such a searching wind. 

“It is very nice of you,’ said Jean Renaud, ‘to 
put up with my company.’ 

‘Do not burthen yourself with gratitude, my 
boy. I brought you, please understand, merely to 
have some one to abuse if she does not come, if 
things turn out badly, if 

‘Oh, then I must make it my business to see 
that they turn out well,’ said he, affecting alarm, 
with the pretty smile which betrayed his childlike 
soul. ‘There, see, just behind you. I wager it is 
she, bringing herself along.’ 

André looked behind him. A talika was, in 
fact, emerging from an avenue of trees, jolting 
over the villainous road. Between the curtains, 
blown by the wind, two or three female figures 
were visible, entirely black, faces and all. 

“There are a dozen of them at least packed in 
there,’ André objected. ‘Do you suppose, my 
young friend, that a whole party like that comes 
to keep an assignation? Callers in a body ?’ 

The talika meanwhile was coming near. When 





vI DISENCHANTED 95 


it was quite close, a little hand in a white glove 
came from under a black veil and waved a signal. 
Here she was then! But there were three of 
them! Three, what an amazing adventure! 

“Then I leave you,’ said André. ‘Be discreet 
as you promised and do not look. And settle our 
account with this old fellow; that is your 
business.’ 

And he followed the talika at some distance, 
till presently, in the deserted road, it drew up 
under the shade of a clump of plane-trees. Three 
black spectres, black from head to foot, at once 
sprang out on to the grass. They were nimble 
spectres, light and slender, with long silk skirts; 
they walked on against the wind, which blew hard 
and made them bow their heads; but they went 
slower and slower, as if to invite their follower to 
come up with them. 

No one who has not lived in the East can con- 
ceive of André’s agitation and astonishment, or 
the novelty of the experience of thus walking up to 
veiled Turkish ladies, when he had always learnt to 
regard that class of women as absolutely unap- 
proachable. Was it really possible? They had 
invited him; they were waiting for him; he was 
about to talk to them. 

When they heard him close behind them they 
turned round. 

‘Monsieur André Lhéry, are you not?’ asked 
one of them, whose voice was wonderfully sweet, 
youthful, and shy, and who was certainly trembling. 

He merely bowed in reply, and then from 
under the three black tcharchafs he saw three little 


96 DISENCHANTED vi 


hands appear in long buttoned gloves; they were 
held out to him, and he bowed over each in turn. 

Their faces were at least doubly veiled; they 
were three enigmas in mourning; three inscrutable 
Parcae. 

“You must forgive us,’ said she who had already 
spoken, ‘if we say nothing, or mere trivialities — 
we are dying of fear.’ This, in fact, was very 
evident. 

‘If you could but know,’ said the second, ‘all 
the management needed to get here — the negroes 
and negresses we have dropped on the way 

‘And then the coachman,’ said the third, 
‘a man we do not know and who may be our 
destruction.’ 

Silence. The icy wind eddied in the black silk, 
and took away the breath. The waters of the 
Bosphorus, visible between the trees, was white 
with foam. The few fresh leaves on the trees, 
though scarcely open, were snatched off and swept 
away. But for the flowers in the grass that nodded 
under the long silk skirts, it might have been 
midwinter. They mechanically walked back all 
altogether, like friends taking exercise; but this 
remote spot, this evil weather — all was dismal and 
of rather melancholy augury for the meeting. 

She who had first spoken, and who seemed to 
be the leader of the perilous scheme, began to talk, 
just to say something to break the embarrassing 
silence. 

‘As you see, there are three of us 

‘It is true; I can see that,’ said André, who 
could not help smiling. 





> 





vi DISENCHANTED 97 


“You do not know us, and yet you have been 
our friend for years.’ 

“We live with your books,’ added the second. 

‘And you will tell us if the story of Medjeh is 
true?’ asked the third. 

And now, after the first silence, they all talked 
together; three little women eager to ask a number 
of questions in an interview which could not but 
be brief. The ease with which they expressed 
themselves in French surprised André Lhéry, no 
less than their scared audacity. And the wind 
having almost raised the veils from one face, he 
caught sight of the under part of a chin and the 
top of a throat, details which sooner than any other 
betray advancing years in a woman, and which 
were exquisitely youthful with no sign of a wrinkle. 

They all talked together, and their voices were 
like music; the high wind and the thick veils 
somewhat muffled the sound, to be sure, but the 
pitch in itself was delightful. André, who at first 
had wondered whether he were not the object of 
a practical joke by three Levantines, now no longer 
doubted that the ladies were assuredly Turkish; 
the softness of their voices was an almost certain 
certificate of their nationality, for three Perotes all 
talking together would have reminded him at once 
of the cockatoos in the Zoological Gardens.* 

‘Just now,’ said she who most interested 
André, ‘I saw you laugh when I told you we were 
three. But you did not let me finish my sentence. 
My point was to explain to you that we are three 
to-day and shall still be three next time, if you 


1 There are, I am happy to state, some pleasing exceptions. 
H 


98 DISENCHANTED VI 


again obey our invitation; always three, as insepa- 
table as those parrots, you know — though they 
indeed are but two. And you will never see our 
faces, never. We are three little black shades and 
that is all.’ 

‘Souls,’ said another, ‘merely souls, you under- 
stand; to you we shall always be souls and nothing 
more; three poor souls in torment who need your 
friendship.’ 

“It is useless to try to know one from another; 
still, just to see — who knows whether you can 
guess which is she who wrote to you, she who is 
called Zaideh, you remember. Come, tell us, it. 
will amuse us.’ 

“You yourself, Madame,’ replied André, with- 
out seeming to hesitate. And he was right, and 
from under the veils he heard exclamations of 
surprise in Turkish. 

‘Well, then,’ said Zaideh, ‘now, since we are 
old acquaintances, you and I, it is my part to 
introduce you to my sisters. When that is done 
we shall have accomplished all the formalities in 
the most correct way. So listen. The second 
black domino there, the tallest of us, is Nechedil — 
and very spiteful. The third, a little way off at 
this moment, is Ikbar—very sly. Be on your 
guard. And from this moment take care not to 
mistake one for another of us three.’ 

These names, it hardly need be said, were all 
assumed, and André suspected it. There was no 
Nechedil, or Ikbar, or Zaideh. The second tchar- 
chaf hid the serious regular features and rather 
rapt gaze of Zeyneb, the elder of the cousins of 


vi DISENCHANTED 99 


the bride. As to the third, said to be so sly, if 
André could have lifted the black veil, he would 
have seen the little pert nose and large merry eyes 
of Melek, the red-haired damsel, who had declared 
long ago that ‘the poet must be rather wrinkled.’ 
Melek, it is true, was altered since those days by 
early sorrows and nights spent in tears; still, she 
was so fundamentally gay by nature that even her 
long griefs had not altogether extinguished the 
mirth of her laughter. 

“What idea can you have formed of us?’ said 
Zaideh, after the silence that followed the intro- 
ductions. ‘What kind of women do you suppose 
us to be, of what social rank, of what position? 
Come, tell us.’ 

“Dear me, I can tell you that more precisely 
by and by; still I will not conceal from you that 
I am beginning to suspect that you are not mere 
waiting maids.’ 

‘Ah! And our age? That, to be sure, is of 
no importance, since we mean only to be souls. 
But at the same time it really is my duty to confess 
to you at once, Monsieur Uhery, that we are old 
women, quite old women. 

“That, too, I had detected, if I may say so.’ 

‘Of course, of course,’ echoed Ikbar (Melek) 
in a tone of deep melancholy with a most success- 
ful quaver in her voice. ‘Of course! Old age, 
alas, is a fact that can always be detected as you 
say, in spite of all precautions to conceal it. But 
figures, if you please, be exact — let us see if you 
are a good physiognomist.’ 


100 DISENCHANTED VI 


In regard to their thick veils the word physiog- 
nomist was emphasised as a little funny. 

‘Figures! But will you be hurt by the figures 
I may guess ?’ 

“Not in the least. We have so entirely abdi- 
cated, if only you knew. Go on, Monsieur Lhéry.’ 

“Well, you at once struck me as being grand- 
mothers, whose age must range between — at the 
least, the very least — between eighteen and four- 
and-twenty.’ 

They laughed under their shrouds, not very 
sorry to have missed their mark as old women, 
but too entirely young to be quite flattered. 

In the gale which blew colder and colder under 
the clean-swept sky, scattering twigs and leaves, 
they walked to and fro like old friends. In spite 
of the wind which carried away their words, and 
the roar of the sea tossing close beside them on 
the edge of the road, they began to speak their 
real thoughts, abandoning forthwith the half-mock- 
ing tone by which they had covered the embarrass- 
ment of the first moments. They walked slowly, 
keeping a keen lookout, and obliged to turn 
round when a blast lashed them too roughly. 
André was amazed to find how much and how 
well they understood, and also to feel himself on 
almost confidential terms with these strangers. 

And protected by the bad weather and pro- 
pitious solitude, they thought themselves fairly 
safe, when suddenly, just before them, as they 
turned at the further end, Bogey stood before 
them in the form of two Turkish soldiers out for 
an airing, with canes in their hands such as our 


VI DISENCHANTED 101 


own soldiers are in the habit of cutting in the 
copses. [his was a most perilous encounter, for 
these brave fellows, imported for the most part 
from the wilds of Asia Minor, where there is 
no compromise with ancient principles, were 
capable of going to any lengths in view of a 
proceeding so criminal in their eyes: Moslem 
women with a man from the West. ‘The soldiers 
stood still, rigid with amazement, and then, after 
exchanging a few brief remarks, they took to their 
heels, obviously to give notice to their comrades 
or to the police, or perhaps to rouse the inhabitants 
of the nearest village. The three little black 
phantoms, thoroughly frightened, jumped into 
their carriage, which set off at a break-neck gallop, 
while Jean Renaud, who had watched the incident 
from a distance, hurried up to offer his assistance}; 
and as soon as the talika, at a tearing pace, was 
lost to sight among the trees, the two friends 
turned off into a narrow cross-road which led up 
to the thick brushwood. 

“Well, what are they like?’ asked Jean Renaud 
a minute after, when, the alarm being over, they 
were walking quietly among the trees. 

‘Simply astounding,’ replied André. 

‘Astounding! In what way? Attractive?’ 

‘Extremely. And yet no; a more serious 
word would be more appropriate, for they are souls 
you must understand, nothing but souls. My dear 
fellow, for the first time in my life I have con- 
versed with souls.’ 

‘With souls ? — but, after all, in what form? 
Are they respectable women ?’ 


102 DISENCHANTED vI 


‘Oh, as for respectable, all that is most correct. 
If you have been planning in your fancy a love 
affair for your old friend, you may put that aside, 
my dear boy, till another time.’ 

André was in his heart anxious about their 
return home. What they had ventured to do, poor 
little Turks, was so extravagantly contrary to all the 
laws of Islam. Still, was it not in fact of lily-like 
purity: three together, conversing without the 
very smallest double meaning about abstract ideas 
with a man who was not allowed even to sus- 
pect what their faces were like? He would have 
given a great deal to know that they were safe 
and immured behind the lattices of their harem. 
But what could he attempt to do for them? Fly, 
hide, as he had just done — that was all. Any 
intervention, direct or indirect, could only lead to 
their ruin. 


Vil 


Tuts long letter was mysteriously delivered to 
André Lhéry on the following evening: 


“You told us yesterday that you knew nothing 
of the Turkish woman of to-day, and we quite 
believe you, for who can know her when she does 
not know herself ? 

‘And what foreigner could penetrate the mys- 
tery of her soul? She could more easily betray 
that of her face. As to foreign women, some 
few, it is true, have seen our homes; but they 
know only our drawing-rooms, which are now 
exactly like those of Western Europe; the mere 
surface of our life. 

“Well, shall we help you — you alone — to read 
our souls, if it is possible to read them? Now 
that we have put it to the test, we know that you 
and we can be friends; for it was a test; we 
wanted to be sure that there was something more 
than cleverness under your chiselled phrases. Can 
we have been mistaken in supposing that at the 
moment when you quitted the black spectres in 
peril some emotion stirred within you ? Curiosity— 
disappointment — pity, perhaps; but it was not the 
indifference produced by an ordinary assignation. 

103 


104 DISENCHANTED vil 


‘Above all you felt — of that we are quite sure — 
that those bundles devoid of shape and grace were 
not women, as we told you, but souls — a soul : that 
of the modern Moslem woman, whose intelligence 
is liberated — and suffers from it, but who rejoices 
in that emancipating suffering, and who yesterday 
went forth to meet you, a friend of yesterday. 

‘And now, to be still the friend of to-morrow, 
you must learn to see in that soul something more 
than a pleasing incident in your travels, a pretty 
image marking a stage in your life as an artist. 
No more must it be to you the young creature 
over whom you have yearned, nor the lover so 
easily made happy by the charity of your affection. 
If you really care that this soul should love you, 
you must meet half-way the first quiver of its 
tardy awakening. 

‘Your Medjeh is in her grave. We thank 
you in her name, in the name of us all, for the 
flowers you have strewn on the tomb of the little 
slave. In those days, when you were young, you 
culled happiness without an effort where it lay 
within reach of your hand. But the young 
Circassian who rushed and fell into your arms 
is a thing of the past; the time has come when 
even to the Moslem women instinctive love and 
subject love have given place to love by choice. 

‘And the time has come when you too must 
discover and describe something more than the 
picturesque and sensual aspects of love. Try now, 
to-day, to send out your heart so far as to make it 
feel the bitterness of the intolerable suffering which 
is ours, of having nothing to love but a dream. 


VII DISENCHANTED 105 


‘For we are condemned to love that and nothing 
else. 

“You know how our marriages are arranged? 
Still, this mockery of an European home which 
has become usual since, during the last genera- 
tion, Western ideas have prevailed in our houses, 
where formerly odalisques reigned on satin couches, 
even this represents a change which gratifies us, 
though such a home is still but a frail joy, liable 
at any moment to be wrecked by the whim of a 
capricious husband, or the introduction of a strange 
woman. In short, we are paired without our con- 
sent, like yearling sheep or fillies. Very often, no 
doubt, the man thus allotted to us by fate is gentle 
and kind; but we have not chosen him. In time 
we can become attached to him, but this is not the 
affection of love; feelings are born in us which 
presently take wings and sometimes alight far, far 
away, where, no one ever knows but ourselves. 
Yes, wecan love. But we love with our souls, lov- 
ing another soul; our mind weds another mind; 
our heart is enslaved by another heart. Such love as 
this remains a dream, because we are honest women, 
and even more because the dream is too dear and 
precious for us to risk its existence by trying to 
realise it. And it remains for ever innocent, like 
our walk yesterday at Pacha Bagtcheh when it 
blew so hard. 

“And this is the secret of the Moslem woman’s 
soul in Turkey in the year 1322 of the Hegira. 
Our modern education has led to this duality in 
our lives. 

“This declaration will strike you as more extra- 


106 DISENCHANTED VII 


ordinary than our rendezvous. We amused our- 
selves beforehand by imagining what your surprise 
would be. At first you thought it was a practical 
joke. Then, still doubting, you were tempted to 
fancy it was an adventure — perhaps you hoped it 
might be; you vaguely expected to meet Zaideh 
attended by subservient slaves, curious to see a 
celebrated author, and not too reluctant to lift her 
veil. 

“And all you met were three souls. 

“These souls will be your faithful friends if 
you will be theirs. 

‘ZAIDEH, NECHEDIL, and IKBaR.’ 


VIII 


THE STORY OF ZAIDEH FROM THE TIME OF HER 
MARRIAGE TILL THE COMING OF ANDRE LHERY 


THE young Bey’s love-making, which had become 
more and more acceptable, had gradually lulled to 
rest her schemes of rebellion. While keeping her 
soul to herself, she had surrendered all else very 
completely to her handsome lord, though he was 
no more than a great spoilt child, whose selfishness 
was veiled by much gracious elegance and inviting 
ways. | 
Was it for André Lhéry that she still guarded 
her soul? She herself hardly knew, for, as time 
went on, she did not fail to discern how childish 
her dream was. She now seldom thought of him. 

She was almost resigned to her new cloister, 
and life would have been very endurable but that 
Hamdi, at the end of their second year of married 
life, took it into his head to marry Durdaneh and 
have two wives in the old fashion. Then, to 
avoid an unseemly quarrel, she had simply asked 
and obtained permission to withdraw for two 
months to her grandmother’s house at Kassim 
Pacha, to take time for consideration of the new 
situation, and calmly prepare herself to face it. 

107 


108 DISENCHANTED Vill 


So she went quietly away one evening, deter- 
mined, however, to do anything rather than return 
to this house and play the part of an odalisque, to 
which she was gradually being subdued. 

Zeyneb and Melek had also come home to 
Kassim Pacha. Melek, after months of misery 
and tears, had at last been divorced from an 
impossible husband, and Zeyneb, released from 
hers by death, after a year and a half of wretched- 
ness spent with an invalid who was repugnant to 
every sense; both thus irremediably blighted in 
their early youth, weary, widowed, like derelicts 
of life, had nevertheless been enabled to resume 
their intimacy as sisters, and feel it the closer for 
their utter dejection. 

The news of André Lhéry’s arrival in Con- 
stantinople, which they had seen in the Turkish 
newspapers, had been utterly astounding; but at 
the same time their idol of yore fell from his 
pedestal. What, this man was like any other 
man; he would have functions, duties as a sub- 
ordinate in an Embassy; he had a profession; 
above all he had a definite age? And Melek 
forthwith amused herself by depicting to her 
cousin the hero of her dreams as an old man, 
bald, no doubt, and probably obese. 

‘André Lhéry!’ said one of their friends from 
the English Embassy, who had happened to see 
him, and whom they eagerly questioned a few 
days later. ‘André Lhéry? Well, as a rule, he 
is quite intolerable. Whenever he opens his - 
he seems to think he is doing you a favour. In 
society he is ostentatiously bored. As to stout or 


Vill DISENCHANTED 109 


bald, no, that he is not. I must grant that he is 
not at all ; 

“And his age?’ 

‘His age? he has no age. It ranges over 
twenty years from one hour to the next. He 
takes the most extreme care of his person, and 
still makes you believe he is young, especially 
when he happens to be amused, for he has a child’s 
laugh and teeth. Indeed a child’s eyes too, as I 
have noticed in such moments. At other times he 
is arrogant, full of airs, and half in the moon. He 
has already been most severely criticised.’ 

In spite of this report, they had finally decided 
to dare the audacious adventure of going to meet 
him, to break the dreary monotony of their life. 
In the bottom of their hearts, some of their former 
adoration still survived from the days when he had 
been to them a soaring spirit, a being dwelling in 
the clouds. And also, to give themselves the 
semblance of a reason for running into such 
danger, they said, ‘We will ask him to write a 
book in favour of Turkish women as they now 
are; in that way we may help hundreds of our 
sisters who are crushed as we are.’ 





IX 


AFTER the crazy expedition to Tchiboukli spring 
rushed on apace, the sudden, exquisite, and tran- 
sient spring of Constantinople. The unceasing 
frozen gale from the Black Sea suddenly granted 
truce. And there came the delightful surprise of 
discovering that this land, as far south as Central 
Italy and Spain, could be at times deliciously lumi- 
nous and warm. Along the Bosphorus the marble 
steps of the palaces and the old wooden houses that 
rise out of the water were steeped in hot sunshine. 
And Stamboul, in the dry clear atmosphere, wore 
its indescribable air of oriental torpor. The Turks, 
a dreamy and contemplative people, lived out of 
doors once more, seated outside the thousand quiet 
little cafés, or round the sacred mosques, near the 
fountains, under the young vine leaves and the 
wistarias on the trellises, or the shady plane-trees; 
myriads of narghilehs exhaled their enticing fra- 
grance at the side of the streets, and swallows piped 
in a frenzy of joy round their nests. The ancient 
tombs and grey cupolas slept in an unutterable 
peace which seemed immutable, sempiternal. And 
the remote shores of Asia, and the placid sea of 
Marmora, visible between the buildings, blazed 
with colour. 
IIo 


IX DISENCHANTED III 
André Lhéry drifted back into Turkish orient- 


alism with even deeper melancholy perhaps 
than in the days of his youth, but with quite as 
deep a passion. And one day when he was 
sitting in the shade, among hundreds of turbaned 
dreamers, far from Pera and its modern turmoil, 
in the very heart, the fanatical heart, of old 
Stamboul, Jean Renaud, now his usual companion 
in these Turkish hours, asked him point-blank: 

“Well, what about the three little spectres of 
Tchiboukli? No further news?’ 

They were outside the mosque of Mehmed 
Fatih, on an old-world open place where Euro- 
peans never come, and at the moment the muezzins 
were chanting, as if they had been lifted up to 
heaven, at the very top of the gigantic stone 
shafts of the minarets; mere voices, quite remote, 
coming from so high above all earthly things, and 
lost in the limpid blue above. 

‘Ah! The three little Turkish ladies,’ replied 
André. ‘No, nothing since the letter I showed 
you. Qh, I fancy the adventure is at an end, and 
they are thinking no more about it.’ 

As he spoke he affected an air of indifference, 
but the matter had troubled his meditative peace; 
for each day that passed without any further sign 
from his unknown friends made the notion more 
painful that he might never — no, never, again hear 
Zaideh’s voice of singular sweetness beneath her 
veil. The time was past when he could feel sure 
of the impression he could produce; nothing 
tortured him so cruelly as the flight of his youth, 
and he sadly told himself, ‘They expected to see 


112 DISENCHANTED Ix 


me a young man, and they were too greatly disap- 
pointed.’ 

Their last letter had ended with the words, 
“We will be your friends if you choose.’ 

Certainly he asked nothing better; but where 
was he now to find them? In such a vast and sus- 
picious labyrinth as Constantinople, to seek three 
Turkish ladies whose names and appearance were 
unknown to him, was as much as to undertake one 
of those impossible quests which the malignant 
spirits of old tales were wont to propose to the 
hero. 


X 


But on that very day and at that same hour the 
mysterious little lady who had planned the expedi- 
tion to Tchiboukli was scheming to cross the 
redoubtable threshold of Yildiz to cast a supreme 
throw. On the other side of the Golden Horn, 
at Kassim Pacha, behind the oppressive lattices, 
in the room she had occupied as a girl, and to which 
she had returned, she was very busy in front of a 
mirror. A dress of grey and silver with a court 
train, which had arrived the day before from a 
great house in Paris, made her look more slender 
even than usual, more fragile and pliant. She 
meant to be very pretty to-day, and her two 
cousins, aS anxious as she was about the issue, 
helped her to dress in oppressed silence. Decidedly 
the dress was becoming, and the rubies were be- 
coming too on the grey cloudiness of the material. 
At any rate, the time had come. Her train was 
looped up by a ribbon to her waist, as etiquette 
requires in Turkey when approaching the Sov- 
ereigns; for, though the train is indispensable, 
no woman who is not a princess of the blood is 
permitted to let it sweep behind her over the 
magnificent carpets in the palace. Then her fair 
head was covered up in a yashmak, the white 
I 113 


114 DISENCHANTED x 


muslin veil which great ladies still wear in their 
carriage or their caique on certain special occasions, 
and which is compulsory, like the train, for those 
who enter Yildiz, where no woman would be 
admitted in the tcharchaf. 

The time had come. Zaideh, after kissing her 
cousins, went downstairs and took her seat in her 
brougham—all black, with gilt lanterns, and drawn 
by black horses with gold plate on the harness. 
So she started, the blinds closed and two eunuchs 
on horseback behind the carriage. 

This was the disaster — easily foreseen, of course 
— which now threatened her. The two months of 
seclusion agreed to by her mother-in-law were at 
an end; Hamdi now insisted on his wife’s return 
to their home. This was a matter of money, 
perhaps, but it was a matter of love too; for he 
had not been slow to perceive that she, in fact, was 
the light of his house, in spite of the empire 
exerted by the other over his senses. And he 
wanted to have both. 

Now, then, for divorce at any cost. But to 
whom could she turn to obtain it? Her father, 
who had gradually regained her fond affection, 
would no doubt have supported her petition to 
His Imperial Majesty, but for a year now he had 
slept in the holy cemetery of Eyoub. There was 
her grandmother, too old now to take such steps, 
and far too ‘1320’ to understand; in her time 
two wives under the same roof or three, or even 
four—why not? This newfangled notion of 
being the only one had come from Europe — with 
governesses and infidelity. 


x DISENCHANTED 115 


So in her misery it had occurred to her that 
she might throw herself at the feet of the Princess 
Sultana-mother, who was known for her kindness, 
and the audience was at once granted to the 


daughter of T'ewfik Pasha, Marshal of the Court. 


Having entered the vast expanse of the park 
of Yildiz, the black brougham brought her to a 
closed gate, that of the Sultana’s private garden. 
A negro bearing a large heavy key came to open 
it, and the carriage, followed now by an escort of 
the Sultana’s eunuchs in livery to help the visitor 
to alight, made its way through flowery avenues 
and stopped in front of the great outside stair- 
case. 

The fair petitioner knew all the ceremonial of 
the Court, having been several times to the great 
receptions held by the kind Princess in Bairam. 
In the hall she found, as she expected, thirty or 
more little fairies — very young girl slaves, mira- 
cles of beauty and grace, all dressed alike like sis- 
ters, and drawn up in two lines to receive her. After 
a deep curtsey these fairies flew about her like a 
flight of light billing birds, and bore her off to 
the room of the yashmaks, where every lady must 
shed her veils. ‘There, in the winking of an eye, 
with consummate dexterity, the fairies, without a 
word, took off the enveloping gauzes which were 
kept in place by innumerable pins, and she was 
ready, not a hair out of place, under a very tall, 
very light gauze turban which rests on the top of 
the head and is indispensable at Court, princesses 
of the blood alone having the right to appear there 


116 DISENCHANTED x 


bareheaded. An aide-de-camp then came in to 
welcome her and conduct her to the ante-room — 
a woman, of course, since there are no men 
about a Sultana—a young Circassian slave, 
always chosen for her tall figure and faultless 
beauty, who wears a military tunic with gold 
aiguillettes, a long train looped up to the waist, 
and a little officer’s cap with gold braid. In the 
ante-room another woman, the Sultana’s treasurer, 
came in as custom requires to keep her company ; 
a Circassian it need not be said, since no Turkish 
lady is admitted to any function in the palace, but 
a woman of high birth as holding so important a 
post; and with her, a woman of the world and 
indeed a very great lady, conversation was impera- 
tive. All these delays were of mortal length, and 
her hopes and her confidence dwindled rapidly. 

As she entered the sitting-room so difficult of 
access, where the mother of the Khalif would 
receive her, she was trembling as in a violent 
fever fit. 

It was a room of purely European luxury, alas! 
but for the exquisite carpets and the Moslem 
texts; a bright, gay room, high up, and looking 
out on the Bosphorus, which could be seen shining 
and luminous through the latticed windows. Five 
or six ladies in court dress, and the kind Princess 
herself seated at the end of the room, rose to 
receive the visitor. ‘Three deep curtsies must be 
made as for the sovereigns of the West; the third 
a prostration, down on both knees, the forehead 
bent low as if to kiss the hem of the lady’s dress; 
but she at once, with a kindly smile, held out her 


x DISENCHANTED 117 


hands to raise the suppliant. There was a young 
prince present, one of the Sultan’s sons, who 
all, like the Sultan himself, have the right to 
see women unveiled. There were two princesses 
of the blood, fragile, graceful creatures, with their 
trains displayed and their heads bare. And, 
finally, three ladies wearing small turbans on their 
very fair hair, and their trains looped to their 
waists; three Serailis, formerly slaves in this very 
palace and become great ladies by marriage. ‘They 
had been on a few days’ visit to their former 
mistress and benefactress, having acquired the 
right, as Serailis, of arriving at the house of either 
of the princesses without an invitation as if they 
were members of the family. ‘This is an accepted 
view of slavery in Turkey, and more than one 
wife of an uncompromising Western socialist might 
with great advantage come to a harem to learn to 
treat her maid, or her governess, as the Turkish 
ladies treat their slaves. 

All real princesses, with rare exceptions, have 
the charm of being simple and gracious, and none 
certainly excel those of Constantinople in gentle 
simplicity and modesty. 

“My dear child,’ said the white-haired Sultana 
cheerfully, ‘I bless the good wind that blows you 
here. And you know we shall keep you all day; 
indeed we shall call upon you to give us a little 
music, you play too delightfully.’ 

Some more fair girls who had not yet appeared, 
the young slaves who had charge. of the refresh- 
ments, now came in carrying, on trays of gold, 
cups of gold and boxes of gold, containing coffee, 


118 DISENCHANTED x 


sirops, and preserved rose leaves, while the Sultana 
turned the conversation to one or another of the 
matters of the day, which never fail to filter into 
the seraglio, however hermetically it may be 
closed. 

But the visitor could ill conceal her distress; 
she was longing to speak, to beseech, that was 
only too evident. The prince, with polite dis- 
cretion, withdrew; the princesses, and the beauti- 
ful Serailis, under the pretence of seeing some- 
thing in the distance on the Bosphorus, went 
to gaze out of the windows of an adjoining 
room. 

“What is it, my dear child?’ asked the Sultana 
in a low voice, as she leaned with motherly kind- 
ness over Zaideh, who fell at her feet. 

The first minutes were full of increasing and 
agonising anxiety when the little rebel, who was 
evidently and eagerly studying the effect of her 
petition, saw in the Sultana’s face that the princess 
did not understand and was a little startled. Still 
those kind eyes did not speak refusal; they 
seemed only to say, ‘A divorce, and with so 
little justification! That is a difficult matter 
indeed! Well, I will try. But in such a case 
my son will never grant it.’ 

And Zaideh, reading this refusal though it re- 
mained unspoken, felt as though the carpet, the 
floor, were sinking under her knees, and thought 
herself lost, when suddenly something like a 
religious thrill of awe seemed to run through the 
palace; soft shuffling feet flew along the corridors, 
every slave fell prostrate with a fuss of rustling 


x DISENCHANTED 11g 


silk, and a eunuch rushed into the room, announc- 
ing in a voice sharpened by dread, ‘His Imperial 
Majesty !’ 

He had hardly spoken the words at which 
every head must bow, when the Sultan appeared 
at the door. The suppliant, still on her knees, 
met and for a second felt his gaze, which looked 
straight into her eyes, and then lost consciousness, 
sinking like a dead thing, ghastly pale, into 
the silvery cloud of her dress. 

The man who had just come into the room 
was perhaps in the whole world the most un- 
approachably incomprehensible to Western minds 
—the Khalif, whose responsibilities are super- 
human; the man who holds all Islam in the 
hollow of his hand, and is bound to defend it 
alike against the undeclared concert of all Chris- 
tian nations, and against the consuming fire 
of time; the man who, to the remotest desert 
ends of Asia, is known as the ‘Shadow of the 
Almighty.’ 

On the present occasion he had merely come to 
visit his venerated mother, when, in the expression 
of the kneeling woman, he read such anguish and 
ardent entreaty. And that look went to the 
mysterious heart which hardens sometimes under 
the burden of his solemn pontificate, but on the 
other hand is always tender with a secret and 
exquisite compassion that none can know. With 
a wave of the hand he pointed out the swooning 
lady to his daughters, who, bowed to the ground 
in deep prostration, had not seen her fall; and the 
two princesses in their flowing trains raised in their 


120 DISENCHANTED x 


arms the lady of the looped-up train as tenderly as 
if she had been their sister. She, unwittingly, had 
gained her suit by her eyes. 

When Zaideh came to herself some time after, 
the Sultan had left. Suddenly remembering it all, 
she looked about her, doubting whether she had 
really seen, or only dreamed of that awful presence. 
No, the Khalif was not there. But the Sultana- 
mother, leaning over her and taking her hands, 
said affectionately: ‘Rouse up, my child, and be 
happy; my son has promised to sign to-morrow an 
Tradeh which will set you free.’ 

And as she went down the marble stair she felt 
so light, so excited, so tremulous! Like a bird 
which finds its cage door open. She smiled at the 
fairy-maids of the yashmak, following her in a 
sheeny group, hastening to cover her up; and in 
a hand’s turn, with no end of pins, they had 
rearranged over her hair and her face the time- 
honoured white gauze shroud. 

And yet, as she sat in her black and gold car- 
riage, while the horses proudly trotted back to 
Kassim Pacha, she felt a cloud rise to dim her 
joy. She was free, oh yes, and her pride was 
avenged. But now she was conscious of an 
obscure longing, binding her still to Hamdi from 
whom she had believed herself detached for ever. 
‘This is vile and humiliating!’ said she to herself; 
‘for the man has never been loyal or tender, and I 
do not love him, no! How utterly he must have 
profaned my soul, how mercilessly have debased 
me, that I should still dream of his embraces! Ah, 
do what I may, I am no longer wholly my own, 


* DISENCHANTED I2I 


since this memory can stain me still. And if, by 
and by, another man should cross my path whom 
I should really love, nothing worthy to be offered 
to him is left to me but my soul; and never will 
I give him anything else, never!’ 


XI 
On the following day she wrote to André: 


“If the day is fine on Thursday shall we meet 
at Eyoub? We shall arrive at about two o’clock 
in a caique, at the steps by the water, exactly at 
the end of the avenue paved with marble, leading 
to the mosque. You can see us land from the 
little café there, and you will recognise us I am 
sure, the three poor little black spectres of the 
other day! As you like to wear a fez, put one on; 
it will be a little less risky. We will go straight 
to the mosque and go in for a moment. You 
must wait for us in the courtyard. ‘Then walk on, 
we will follow. You know Eyoub better than we 
do; find some place, perhaps up the height of the 
cemetery, where we may talk undisturbed.’ 


And the weather was beautiful that Thursday, 
with a far-away sky of melancholy blue. It had 
turned suddenly hot after the long winter, and the 
Eastern aroma, which had been dormant in the 
cold, had everywhere come to life again. 

The advice to André to wear a fez when going 
to Eyoub was quite unnecessary: he would never 
have been seen in anything else in that part of - 

122 


XI DISENCHANTED 123 


town where he was most at home. This was his 
first visit here since his return to Constantinople, 
and as he stepped out of his caique and set foot on 
those unchanged marble steps, it was with deep 
emotion that he recognised everything in this 
favoured nook, as yet ualtered. The little old 
café, a hut of worm-eaten wood, standing out over 
the water on a foundation of piles, had remained 
untouched since the days of his youth. When, 
accompanied by Jean Renaud, also wearing a fez, 
and strictly charged not to speak at all, he entered 
to take a seat in the ancient little room, open on 
all sides to the pure air and coolness of the sea, 
they found, lying on the divans covered with often 
washed calico print, a party of comfortable cats 
sleeping in the sun, besides two or three men in 
long robes and turbans, contemplating the blue 
sky. This motionless calm was all-pervading, this 
indifference to the flight of time, this resigned and 
very gentle philosophy, which are nowhere to be 
found but in the lands of Islam, under the isolating 
influence that emanates from sacred mosques and 
vast burial grounds. 

He and his accomplice in this dangerous ad- 
venture seated themselves on the calico-covered 
benches, and the smoke of their narghilehs soon 
mingled with that of the other dreamers; these 
were Imams who had saluted them in the Turkish 
fashion, not imagining them to be foreigners, and 
André was amused by their mistake, which fa- 
voured his purpose. 

There, just under their eyes, was the quiet little 
landing-place where the ladies would presently 


124 DISENCHANTED xI 


arrive; an old man with a white beard, who was in 
charge of it, kept ineffectual guard over it, guiding 
the approach of the rare caiques with his long pole; 
and the water scarcely rippled in the secluded little 
inlet where there was no tide, as it lapped against 
the old marble steps. 

This is the end of the world, the last curve of 
the Golden Horn; no one comes by to go any 
farther; it leads nowhere. Nor on the shore is 
there any road beyond, here everything comes to 
an end; the arm of the sea, and the turmoil of 
Constantinople. Everything is old and abandoned 
here at the foot of the barren hills as brown as the 
desert and full of tombs. Beyond the little café 
on piles, where they were waiting, there were a few 
more huts of crumbling wood, an ancient convent 
of dancing dervishes, and then nothing but tomb- 
stones in perfect solitude. 

They watched the light caiques which came 
in from time to time from the Stamboul shore, 
or from Kassim Pacha, bringing the faithful to 
worship in the mosque or to visit the tombs; or 
sometimes the inhabitants of the peaceful suburb. 
They saw two dervishes land and then some 
spectral women all in black, but bent and slow of 
pace, and then two pious ancients in green turbans.’ 
Above their heads the reflection of the sun from 
the dancing surface of the water played on the 
wooden ceiling, like the changeful lights on watered 
silk, whenever another caique disturbed the glassy 
pool. 

At last, far away, something came in sight 

1 Worn by the Hadji who have made the pilgrimage to Mecea, 


XI DISENCHANTED 125 


which looked very like the visitors they expected, 
three slight black figures against the luminous 
blue of the gulf, elegant and slender even at a 
distance. 

Yes, here they were. They stepped out close 
to the café, recognised the men no doubt in spite 
of wearing triple veils, and slowly made their way 
up the white flagged path towards the mosque. 
The men, of course, had not stirred, hardly daring 
to follow them with their eyes up the deserted 
avenue, so sacred, so surrounded by eternal sleep. 

After a long pause, André rose with an air of 
indifference, and as slowly as they themselves took 
the beautiful path of the dead which lies between 
funereal kiosques — circular buildings of white 
marble, and here and there between arcades like 
porticoes closed by iron railings. If the passer-by 
stops to look in through the windows of these 
kiosques he can see inside, in the dim light, tall 
bright green catafalques hung with ancient em- 
broidery. And behind the railings of the porticoes 
there are tombs under the open sky, a crowd in 
wonderfully close array; tombs that are still 
magnificent, tall marble slabs, each touching its 
neighbour, mysteriously beautiful and covered with 
gilt arabesques and inscriptions; and all about 
them is a thicket of verdure, of pink roses, wild 
flowers, and tall grass. And the grass grows, too, 
between the flagstones of the echoing avenue, and 
close by the mosque the trees interlace and form 
a vault of green twilight. 

On reaching the sacred court André looked 
about him, seeking them there. No, nobody yet. 


126 DISENCHANTED xI 


This court lay in deep shade under its cloister and 
the ancestral plane-trees; here and there on the 
walls gleamed antique porcelain tiles; pigeons and 
storks, dwellers in the neighbourhood, picked their 
way about the pavement, quite confident in this 
peaceful spot where man comes only to pray. 
Presently the heavy curtain over the door of the 
sanctuary was raised, and the three black spectres 
emerged. 

“Walk on, we will follow,’ Zaideh had written. 
So he took the lead, and rather hesitatingly turned 
off down silent funereal side paths, still between 
railed arches through which the myriad tombstones 
could be seen, towards a more humble, much more 
ancient and decrepit part. of the cemetery, where 
the dead lie in what seems a virgin forest. Then, 
having reached the foot of the hill, he proceeded 
to mount it. About twenty paces behind came 
the three ladies, and, further away, Jean Renaud, 
who was to keep watch and give the alarm. 

They climbed the hill without leaving the 
endless graveyards which cover all the heights of 
Eyoub. And by degrees there rose around them 
a prospect befitting the Arabian Nights; they 
would presently see the whole of Constantinople 
on the horizon, rising up above the tangle of trees 
as if it were mounting with them. Up here there 
was no longer a grove as in the valley round the 
cemetery; on this hill the grass lay smooth, 
and there only grew among the endless tombs, 
giant cypresses with ample space and air between 
them, affording a good view. 

They were now quite at the top of this quiet 


/ 


XI DISENCHANTED 129 


solitude; André stopped, and the three slender, 
black figures with no features came round him. 

‘Did you expect ever to see us again?’ they 
asked almost together in their pretty, cajoling 
voices, offering him their hands. 

To which André replied a little sadly: 

“How could I tell whether you would ever 
come again ?’ 

“Well, here they are once more —the three 
little souls in torment who are so daring through 
thick and thin! But where are you leading us?’ 

‘Why, no further than this if it suits you. See, 
those four tombstones — they seem placed on pur- 
pose for us to sit upon. I see no one on either 
side — besides I am wearing a fez; we will talk 
Turkish if any one comes by, and you will be 
supposed to be out with your father 

‘Oh!’ cried Zaideh, eagerly, ‘our husband, you 
mean.’ 

And André thanked her with a little bow. 

In Turkey, though the dead are held in so 
much respect, no one hesitates to sit among them, 
even on their tombstones; and in many cemeteries 
there are walks laid out and seats in the shade, as 
in gardens and squares with us. 

“This time,’ said Nechedil, seating herself on a 
fallen stone, “we would not name a meeting place 
so far away as on the first day; your kindness 
would at last have been tried too far.’ 

“Eyoub is perhaps a somewhat fanatical spot 
for such an adventure as ours,’ remarked Zaideh. 
‘But you are fond of it, you are at home here. 
We too love it, and we shall be at home here by 





128 DISENCHANTED xI 


and by, for here, when our time comes, is where 
we hope to rest.’ 

André looked at them in fresh amazement. 
Was it possible that these three little persons, 
whose extremely modern spirit had been brought 
so near to him, who read Madame de Noailles, and 
could on occasion talk like young Parisian women 
too familiar with the writings of Gyp, these little 
flowers of the twentieth century, should be destined 
as Moslems, and no doubt of high rank, to sleep 
some day in this sacred grove, there — down there 
— among all the turbaned dead of the early ages 
of the Hegira, in one of those inscrutable marble 
kiosques ? There each would have her green cloth 
catafalque hung with a pall from Mecca, on which 
too soon the dust would gather, and, as for all the 
others, a little oil lamp would be lighted for her 
at dusk. Ah! still the perpetual mystery of Islam 
which enwrapped these women, even in broad day- 
light when the sky was blue and the spring sun 
shining brightly. 

They sat talking, on these old, old stones, their 
feet in the fine grass which was gemmed with 
small, delicate flowers, the friendly growth of a 
dry, undisturbed soil. “They had here a wonderful 
spot for their conversation, a site unique in the 
world and consecrated by centuries of the past. 
Former generations without number, Byzantine 
emperors and magnificent Khalifs, had laboured 
for centuries to complete for their sole use and 
pleasure that fairy-like scene: here lay all Stamboul 
in almost a bird’s-eye view, its crowd of mosques 
standing out against the distant blue of the sea; 


xI DISENCHANTED 129 


Stamboul seen foreshortened, in close array, domes 
and minarets piled one above another in profuse 
and magnificent confusion, and behind them the 
sea of Marmora, a dizzy circle of lapis-lazuli. In 
the foreground, close to them, were thousands of 
tombstones, some upright, some already leaning, 
but all strange and attractive with their gilt 
arabesques, gilt flowers, gilt inscriptions. ‘There 
were cypress trees four centuries old with trunks 
like church pillars, of stone colour, and black 
sheaves of foliage rising up to the brilliant sky like 
black steeples. 

The three souls without features seemed almost 
gay to-day — gay because of their youth, because 
they had succeeded in escaping and felt free for an 
hour, and because the atmosphere here was mild 
and light, with the fragrance of spring. 

‘Now repeat our names,’ ordered Ikbar; ‘just 
to see that you do not mistake one for the 
other.’ 

And André, pointing to each in turn with his 
finger, pronounced their names like a schoolboy 
obediently saying his lesson: ‘Zaideh, Nechedil, 
Ikbar.’ 

“Good, very good! But these are not our real 
names at all, you know.’ 

“Believe me, I suspected as much, especially as 
Nechedil of all names is that of a slave.’ 

“Nechedil, quite true, yes. Ah, you know so 
much as that!’ 

The high sun fell full on their thick veils, and 
André, under this strong light, tried to discover 
something of their features. But no — nothing. 

K 


130 DISENCHANTED XI 


Three or four thicknesses of gauze made them 
quite inscrutable. 

For a moment he was put off the track by their 
tcharchafs of poor black silk somewhat frayed, and 
by the rather shabby gloves they had thought it 
wise to put on so as not to attract attention. 

‘After all,’ thought he, ‘perhaps they are not 
such great ladies as I fancied, poor little things !’ 
But then his eye fell on their very elegant shoes 
and their fine silk stockings. And then, their 
evidently high culture and perfect ease of manner. 

‘Well, and since that last day,’ asked one, 
‘have you made no inquiries to identify us ?’ 

“An easy task, indeed, to make inquiries; and, 
besides, [donot carea pin. Ihave three charming 
little friends, that much I know, and as to their 
names I am quite satisfied.’ 

‘But now,’ proposed Nechedil, ‘we may very 
well tell him who we are. We have entire con- 
fidence in him 

“No, I would rather not, indeed,’ André put in. 

‘Do not do anything of the kind,’ said Ikbar. 
‘All our charm in his eyes lies in our little mystery. 
Confess, Monsieur Lhéry, if we were not veiled 
Moslem women, if each time we meet you it were 
not at the risk of our life — nay, of yours too, 
perhaps — you would say: ‘‘ What do those three 
little fools want with me?” and you would -not 
come again.’ 

“No, no, come 

“Yes, yes. The improbability of the adventure 
and the danger are all that attract you, I know.’ 

“No, I assure you — no longer.’ 





5] 





XI DISENCHANTED 131 


‘So be it, do not go too far,’ said Zaideh 
decisively, after a moment’s silence. ‘Do not 
urge the discussion, I would rather. But with- 
out affording you particulars of our birth and 
parentage, Monsieur Lhéry, allow us to tell you our 
realnames. While preserving our incognito, I feel 
as if that would make us closer friends.’ 

‘I am very willing,’ said he. ‘I believe I should 
even have requested it. Assumed names are a 
sort of barrier.’ 

“Well, then: “Nechedil’s” real name is Zeyneb ; 
the name of a wise and pious lady who taught 
theology once upon a time in Bagdad, and it suits 
her very well. “Ikbar” is Melek,’ and how dare 
she have such a name, I wonder, such a little 
plague as she is. I, “Zaideh,”’ am called Djenan,’ 
and if ever you should know my history you will 
see what a mockery it is. Now repeat them: 
Zeyneb, Melek, Djenan.’ 

‘Quite unnecessary, I shall not forget. But, 
since you have gone so far, you must tell one 
essential thing; in addressing you must I say 
Madame, or else 

“You must say nothing whatever but just 
Zeyneb, Melek, Djenan, nothing more.’ 

“Oh! and yet : 

“That shocks you. But what can we say, we 
are little barbarians. However, if you insist, it 
must be Madame — Madame, alas! to all three. 
But our acquaintance is already so antagonistic to 
all the formalities; what can a little more or less 
matter now? And you see our friendship may 

1 Meaning an Angel. 2 Meaning Well-beloved. 








132 DISENCHANTED XI 


know no to-morrow; such terrible dangers hang 
over our meetings that when we presently part we 
do not know that we shall ever meet again. Why 
then, during this short hour which may never be 
repeated in all our lives, why not allow us to 
believe that we are indeed your intimate friends ?’ 

Strange as it was, the proposal was made in a 
perfectly honest, frank, and well-bred manner, 
with purity above suspicion, soul speaking to 
soul. And André remembered the danger, which 
he had in fact forgotten, so completely did this 
enchanting spot wear every appearance of peace 
and security, and so sweet was the spring day. 
He remembered their courage, which had faded 
from his mind, their daring to be here, the bold- 
ness of desperation; and instead of smiling at this 
request he felt how anxious, how pathetic it was. 

*I will address you as you wish,’ he replied, 
‘and thank you. But you on your side, you will 
drop the Monsieur ?’ 

‘Ah! But then what can we say ?’ 

‘I see no alternative but to call me André.’ 

On which Melek, the child of them all, re- 
marked: 

‘So far as Djenan is concerned, it will not be 
for the first time, you know.’ 

‘Melek, my dear, for pity’s sake!’ 

“No, no, let me tell him. You cannot imagine 
how much we have lived with you in our thoughts, 
and she especially. And long ago, in the diary 
she kept as a girl, written as if it were a letter 
addressed to you, she always wrote to you as 


André,’ 


xI DISENCHANTED 133 


‘She is an enfant terrible, Monsieur Lhéry; I 
assure you she is exaggerating wildly.’ 

‘Ah, and the photo!’ exclaimed Melek, sud- 
denly changing the subject. 

“What photo?’ he asked. 

‘Of you with Djenan. It was as a thing 
beyond all possibility, you understand, that she 
had a fancy to possess it. Be quick, let us do it 
at once; such a moment may never recur. Stand 
beside him, Djenan.’ 

Djenan, with her languid grace and supple 
rhythm of movement, rose to obey. 

“Do you know what you are like?’ said André. 
‘Like an elegy, in all that light trailing black, with 
your head bent, as I see you there surrounded by 
tombs.’ 

Her very voice was an elegy when she spoke 
a little mournfully; its pitch was musical, extra- 
ordinarily sweet, emotional, and yet far away. 

But this little embodied elegy could be suddenly 
very gay and saucy, and full of the most original 
fun; she was evidently capable of childish nonsense 
and irrepressible laughter. 

Standing by André she arranged herself gravely, 
with no sign of raising her veil. 

“Why, do you mean to stand so — all black, with 
no face?’ 

‘Of course. Just a silhouette. Souls, you 
know, need no features.’ 

Melek, going away a few steps, drew from under 
her austere Moslem tcharchaf a little kodak of the 
latest pattern and adjusted it. Snap! a first print; 
snap! a second. 


134 DISENCHANTED . XI 


They never suspected how dear to them, in the 
unforeseen events of days to come, how dear 
and sad, these vague little shadows would be, re- 
corded for mere amusement in such a spot at a 
time when the sunshine and reviving nature made 
all things gay. 

Melek, to make sure, was about to take another 
snapshot, when they caught sight of a large pair 
of moustaches under a scarlet fez, which rose up 
from behind the tombs quite close to them; a 
passer-by, amazed at hearing an unknown tongue 
and seeing Turks taking photographs in a ceme- 
tery. 

He went away, indeed, without making any 
remark, but with a look as much as to say, “Only 
wait a minute. I shall return; we must find out 
the meaning of this.’ And so, as on the first 
occasion, the meeting ended by the flight of the 
three gentle spectres — the flight of terror. And 
it was high time, for down at the foot of the hill 
the stranger was making a stir. 


An hour later, when André and his friend, 
watching from afar, had assured themselves that 
the three Turkish ladies, making their way by 
devious paths, had succeeded in gaining un- 
molested one of the water-steps on the Golden 
Horn and securing a caique, they themselves took 
a boat at a different landing-place and quitted 
Eyoub. 

All was calm and safe now in the slender caique, 
where they sat, almost reclining in the fashion of 
the place, and they floated down the bay shut in 


xI DISENCHANTED 135 


by the immense city, at the hour when the magical 
evening light was in its glory. Their boatman 
hugged the shore under Stamboul in the vast 
shadow cast at sundown, century after century, 
by the pile of houses and mosques over the 
imprisoned and placid waters. Stamboul, tower- 
ing above them, was sinking into solemn mono- 
chrome, with the splendour of its cupolas against 
the blazing west. Stamboul grew imperial again, 
weighted with memories, an oppressor, as at the 
great periods of its past history; and under the 
beautiful, mirror-like sheet which was the surface 
of the sea, one could picture in its depths corpses 
piled up, and the refuse of two sumptuous civilisa- 
tions. While Stamboul sank into gloom, the city 
that sat in tiers, on the opposite shore — Kassim 
Pacha, Tershaneh, and Galata — looked as if on 
fire; even Pera, the commonplace, perched on 
high and bathed in copper-coloured beams, played 
its part in this marvel of the closing day. There 
is hardly another city in the world which has such 
a power of magnifying itself under the favouring 
light and distance, so as to produce a sudden 
splendid spectacle, an apotheosis. 

To André Lhéry these excursions in a caique 
along the shore, in the shadow of Stamboul, had 
of old been of almost daily occurrence when he 
had lived at the top of the Golden Horn. At 
this moment it seemed to him that that long ago 
was but yesterday; the interval of twenty-five 
years was as nothing. He remembered every- 
thing, down to the merest trifles and _ long- 
forgotten details; he could hardly persuade 


136 DISENCHANTED XI 


himself that, if he turned back now, he would 
not find his secluded house in the old place and 
the faces he had known. And without quite 
knowing why, he vaguely associated the humble 
Circassian girl who slept beneath her tombstone 
with Djenan, who had so lately dropped into his 
life; he had a sort of sacrilegious sense of the 
continuity of one with the other, and in this magic 
hour, when all was peace and beauty, enchantment 
and oblivion, he did not feel remorseful over thus 
confounding the two. What could they want of 
him, these three little Turkish women? How 
would this comedy end, so delightful, and so. 
beset with danger? They had said hardly any- 
thing beyond playful or indifferent things, and 
yet they had already attached him, at least by a 
tendril of affectionate anxiety. Their voices per- 
haps had bewitched him, especially that of Djenan; 
a voice which seemed to come from beyond, from 
the past, perhaps, and differed, he knew not how, 
from the common sounds of earth. 

They moved on, floating as if they lay on the 
water itself, so low down does one lie in these 
light caiques almost devoid of gunwale. They 
had left behind them the mosque of Suleyman, 
which lords it over all the others on the highest 
point of Stamboul, chief of all the giant cupolas. 
They had passed that part of the Golden Horn 
where old-world sailing boats still are moored in 
a close crowd: tall hulls gaily painted, and an 
inextricable forest of slender masts all bearing 
the crescent of Islam on their red flags. The 
gulf widened before them to the opening into the 


xI DISENCHANTED 137 


Bosphorus and the sea of Marmora, where number. 
less steamships lay before them, transfigured by 
embellishing distance. Now it was the Asiatic 
shore which suddenly came into sight in no less 
splendour. Scutari, yet another town twinkling 
with light; its minarets, its cupolas rushed into 
view, as red as coral. Scutari on most evenings 
produced the illusion of being on fire in its old 
Asiatic quarters; the small panes of the Turkish 
windows, tiny panes in myriads, each repeating 
the intense refulgence of the half-vanished sun, 
might make any one who was not prepared for 
this customary effect believe that all these houses 
were in flames within. 


XII 


In the course of the following week André Lhéry 


received this letter, in three handwritings : 


Wednesday, April 27, 1904. 


“We are never so silly as when we are with 
you, and afterwards, when you are gone, we are 
ready to cry over it. Do not refuse to come 
once more, for the last time. We have arranged 
everything for Saturday, and if you knew with 
what Machiavelian cunning! But it will be a 
farewell meeting, for we are going away. 

‘Study carefully what follows, so as not to lose 
the clue. 

“Come to Stamboul, to the front of the mosque 
of SultanSelim. Standing facing it, you see on your 
right a little deserted-looking alley between a con- 
vent of dervishes and a small cemetery. Turn up it 
and it willlead you, at about a hundred paces distant, 
to the courtyard of the little mosque of Tossoun 
Agha. Exactly in front of you, in that courtyard, 
you will see a large house, very old, and formerly 
painted a reddish brown. Go round to the back 
of it and you will find a rather dark alley with 
latticed houses on each side and projecting balconies. 
On the left-hand side, the third house, the only 

138 


x1 DISENCHANTED 139 


one with a double door and a copper knocker, is 

the place where we shall await you. Do not 

bring your friend; come alone, it is safer. 
“DJENAN.’ 


‘At half-past two I shall be on the watch _be- 
hind the door, which will be ajar. Wear a fez 
and a coat as nearly as possible of the colour of the 
wall. ‘The little house where we must say good- 
bye is of the very humblest. But we will try to 
leave you with a good impression of the shades 
that have crossed your path, so swift and so light 
that perhaps in a few days you will doubt whether 
they were real. MELEK.’ 


“Still, light as they are, they were not mere 
thistledown wafted to you by a whim. You were 
the first to feel that the hapless Turkish woman 
may have a soul, and they wanted to thank you 
for that. 

‘And this innocent adventure, brief and almost 
unreal as it has been, will not have lasted long 
enough to weary you. It will remain in your life 
a picture without a wrong side to it. 

“On Saturday, before we part for ever, we will 
tell you many things if the meeting is not broken 
up, as it was at Eyoub, by an alarm and flight. 
So, till we meet, our friend. ZEYNEB.’ 


“I, who am the great strategist of the party, 
was desired to draw this fine map which I enclose 
in the letter to help you to find your way. Though 
the neighbourhood has a rather cut-throat aspect, 


140 DISENCHANTED XII 


your friend may be quite easy; nothing can be 
quieter or more respectable. MELEK again.’ 


And André answered at once to ‘Zaideh,’ poste- 


restante: 
‘April 29, 1904. 


“Saturday, the day after to-morrow, at_half- 
past two, in the required dress — a fez and a dark 
stone-coloured cloak, I will be at the door with 
the copper knocker, to place myself at the orders 
of the three black spectres. — Their friend, 

“ANDRE Luéry.’ 


XIll 


Jean Renaup, who augured ill for the expedi- 
tion, in vain begged permission to follow his 
friend. André would do no more than concede 
that they should go together before the appointed 
hour to smoke a narghileh in a place that had 
formerly been dear to him, not more than a 
quarter of an hour’s walk from the fateful spot. 

It was in Stamboul, of course, in the very 
heart of the Moslem quarter, in front of the great 
mosque of Mahomed Fatih,’ which is one of the 
holiest. After crossing the bridge it is yet a 
long walk uphill to this centre of old-world ‘Turk- 
ish life. Here are no more Europeans, no hats, 
no modern buildings; on reaching it through 
a series of little bazaars like those at Bagdad, and 
streets bordered with lovely little fountains, 
funereal kiosques, and railings enclosing tombs, one 
feels that one has gently gone down the long 
_ ladder of time, retrograding to long-past ages. 

They had fully an hour to spare when, emerg- 
ing from the shady alleys, they found themselves 
in front of the colossal white mosque, whose 
minarets, crowned with gold crescents, towered 
up to the infinite blue heavens. Before the tall 

1 Mahomed Fatih or Sultan Fith Mahommed II., the Conqueror. 
141 


142 DISENCHANTED Xi 


arched porch, the place on which they found 
a seat is a sort of external enclosure, chiefly 
frequented by pious devotees faithful to the 
costume of their ancestors, the robe and turban. 
Antiquated little coffee shops stand open all 
round, haunted by dreamy figures, scarcely speak- 
ing at all. There are trees there too, and under 
their shade simple divans are placed for those who 
prefer to smoke outside, and in cages hanging 
from the trees are finches, blackbirds, and linnets, 
specially appointed musicians in this artless, easy- 
going spot. 

They sat down on a bench where some Imams 
courteously made room for them to be seated, and 
there came close up to them first the little begging 
children, then the sleek cats seeking a friendly 
rub, an old man in a green turban hawking coco, 
“as cool as ice,’ a party of very pretty gipsy girls, 
who sold rose-water and danced — all smiling and 
discreet, not insistently urgent. And then they 
were left to themselves, to smoke in silence, and 
listen to the singing birds. Ladies went by all in 
black or wrapped in the Damascus veils which are 
of red or green silk with large patterns in gold; 
the sellers of cats’ meat passed that way, and 
then some worthy Turk — even those in robes of 
silk and magnificently dignified — would gravely 
buy a piece for his cat, and carry it off over his 
shoulder, stuck on the ferrule of his umbrella. 
Again, here were Arabs from the Hedjaz, on 
a visit to the city of the Khalif, and mendicant 
dervishes with uncut hair, returning from a pil- 
grimage to Mecca. An old fellow of at least 


XIII DISENCHANTED 143 


a hundred was trotting babies twice round the 
little square for about a farthing, in a packing-case 
on casters which he had made gaudy with paint, 
but which jolted a great deal on the old broken 
pavement. As a background to these thousand 
trivial things revealing the youthful, simple, 
kindly side of the people, the mosque rose up, 
seeming all the more grand, majestic, and calm, 
superb in its lines and its whiteness with its two 
pointed shafts against the clear sky of the first 
of May. 

Ah! what gentle, honest eyes were to be met 
under those turbans, what trustful, tranquil faces 
framed in black or fair beards! How different 
from the Levantines in short coats who, at this 
same hour, were bustling along the side-walks of 
Pera, and from the crowds in our Western cities, 
with greedy or mocking eyes, scorched by alcohol! 
How truly here one might feel oneself in the 
centre of a happy people, remaining almost such 
as they were in the golden age, by dint of always 
temperate desires, of fear of change, and fidelity 
to the Faith! 

Among the men who sat there under the trees, 
content with a tiny cup of coffee costing a half- 
penny and the soothing narghileh, many were 
artisans, working each for himself at his little old- 
world trade in his booth or in the open air. How 
deeply they would pity the hapless herds of toilers 
in our land of ‘progress,’ who wear themselves 
out in some horrible factory to enrich their masters. 
How strange, how deeply to be pitied, they would 
think the vinous uproar of our labour exchanges, or 


144 DISENCHANTED XIII 


the follies of our political stump-oratory, in a 
public-house between two glasses of absinthe ! 
The moment was near. André Lhéry left his 
companion and made his way alone towards the 
more distant quarter of Sultan Selim, still amid 
purely Turkish dwellings, but along more deserted 
streets, where abandonment and decay could be 
felt. Old garden-walls, old shut-up houses, 
wooden houses all of them, and originally painted 
dark ochre or a russet brown, the hues that give 
Stamboul its low tone of colour and make the 
whiteness of the minarets seem more dazzling. 
Among so many, many mosques, that of Sultan 
Selim is a very large one; its domes and spires 
are visible from afar at sea, but it is also one of 
the most neglected and decayed. ‘There are no 
little cafés on the square that surrounds it, no 
smokers; and on this day there was no one within 
sight; a melancholy desert lay in front of its 
arched entrance. To the right André saw the 
alley described by Melek ‘between a convent of 
dervishes and a little cemetery,’ a gloomy spot 
this alley, the pavement green with weeds. When 
he reached the humble mosque of ‘Tossoun Agha 
he recognised the large house, the abode certainly 
of ghosts, which he was to walk round; and here 
again there was nobody; but the swallows were 
piping to the happy month of May, a wistaria 
hung in garlands, such a wistaria as can only be 
seen in the East, with branches as thick as a ship’s 
cable, and thousands of bunches now showing 
their tender violet hue. And at last here was the 
blind alley, most funereal of all, grass-grown, and 


XIII DISENCHANTED 145 


in a sort of twilight under old balconies masked 
by impenetrable iron-work. Nota creature, not 
even swallows, and total silence. ‘It is a cut-throat 
looking spot,’ Melek had written in her post- 
script; and that it certainly was. 

When only shamming Turk and on mischief 
bent, almost a malefactor, it is uncomfortable to 
walk under such balconies, whence invisible eyes 
may so easily be on the watch. André went 
slowly, fingering his beads, on the lookout, 
without betraying himself, and counting the closed 
doors. ‘The fifth, a double door with a copper 
knocker.’ Ah, this was it! Besides, it was 
just a little way open, and through the crack 
a small gloved hand was seen, drumming on the 
wood, a small hand with many-buttoned gloves, 
much out of its element, it would seem, in this 
uncanny quarter. It would not do to hesitate, for 
fear of possible spies, so André boldly pushed the 
door and went in. 

The black phantom in ambush within, which 
certainly had the figure of Melek, hastily shut and 
locked it, bolted it to make sure, and said gaily, 
“So you have found us! Go up, my sisters are 
upstairs waiting for you.’ 

He mounted a flight of carpetless stairs, dark 
and rickety. At the top, in a small humble harem, 
very simple, with bare walls, which the iron 
gratings and wooden lattice over the windows kept 
in dismal semi-darkness, he found the other two 
spectres, who gave him their hands. For the first 
time in his life he was in a harem, a thing which, 
knowing oriental life as he did, had always seemed 


oo 


146 DISENCHANTED XIII 


to him impossibility itself; he was inside, behind 
those lattices of the women’s windows, those 
jealous lattices, which no man but the master ever 
sees excepting from outside. And the door below 
was barred, and all this was happening in the 
heart of old Stamboul, and in what a mysterious 
dwelling! He asked himself with a little alarm 
that struck him as very amusing: ‘What am I 
doing here?’ All the child-like side of his nature, 
all of him that was still eager to get outside itself, 
still in love with what was foreign and new, was 
humoured to the top of its bent. 

Meanwhile the three ladies of his harem were 
like three tragic ghosts, as closely veiled as they 
had been the other day at Eyoub, and more 
inscrutable than ever, with no sun to help him. 
As to the harem itself, far from oriental luxury, it 
was only decently poor. 

They made him sit down on the faded striped 
divan, and he looked about him. Poor as the 
women of the house might be they had good 
taste, for everything, in spite of the humblest 
simplicity, was harmonious and Eastern; nowhere 
were there any of the trifles ‘made in Germany,’ 
which are now, alas! invading Turkish homes. 

“Am I in your house?’ asked André. 

“Oh, no,’ they exclaimed in a tone suggesting 
a smile under the veils. 

‘Forgive me, my question was idiotic for a heap 
of reasons; first of all because, in fact, I do not 
care. JI am with you; nothing else matters.’ 

He was watching them. They wore the same 
tcharchafs as at the former meeting — black silk, 


XIII DISENCHANTED 147 


frayed here and there. And shod like princesses; 
and besides, when they took off their gloves, fine 
gems sparkled on their fingers. Who and what 
were these women, and what was this little house ? 

Djenan asked him, in her low voice like that of 
a wounded siren at the point of death: 

“How long can you give us?’ 

‘All the time that you are able to give me.’ 

“We —we have nearly two hours of com- 
parative safety. But that will seem rather long 
to you, perhaps.’ 

Melek brought one of the low tables commonly 
used in Constantinople for the little meals which 
are always set before visitors — coffee, bonbons, 
and preserved rose-leaves. The covering was of 
white satin embroidered in gold and strewn with 
real Parma violets; the service was of gold fili- 
gree, and this was the crowning touch of incon- 
gruous disparity. 

“Here are the photos done at Eyoub,’ said she, 
as she helped him like a dainty little slave. ‘But 
they are a failure. We will try again to-day, as 
we shall never meet any more; the light is bad, still, 
with a longer exposure——’ And she produced 
two little prints, brown and fogged, in which 
Djenan’s figure was hardly discernible; André 
accepted them carelessly, little thinking how 
precious they would be to him later. 

‘Is it true,’ he asked, ‘that you are going 
away ?’ 

“Perfectly true.’ 

‘But you will come back; we shall meet 
again ?’ 


148 , DISENCHANTED XII 


To which Djenan replied in the vague fatalist 
words which orientals use when the future is in 
any way in question : ‘Inch Allah!’ Were 
they really going away, or was it an excuse for 
putting an end to this audacious adventure, for 
fear of tiring of it perhaps, or of the desperate 
danger? And André, who after all knew nothing 
about them, felt them as evanescent as a Vision, 
impossible to detain or to call back, as soon as it 
was their whim not to see him again. 

‘And you are leaving soon?’ he ventured to 
inquire. 

‘In about ten days most likely.’ 

“Then you will have time to send me a sign 
once more.’ 

They held council in an undertone, in highly 
colloquial Turkish intermingled with Arab words, 
and too difficult for André to follow: ‘Yes, next 
Saturday,’ they said, ‘we will try once more — and 
thank you for wishing it. But do you know 
what cunning we have to exercise, what com- 
plicity we must bribe to be able to receive you?’ 

And now, it would seem, they must make haste 
to take the photographs, to seize the reflection of 
a sunbeam from the gloomy house opposite, 
which fell into the latticed room, but was slowly 
rising higher and higher and would soon vanish. 
‘Two or three exposures were tried of Djenan by 
the side of André; Dyjenan always shrouded in 
her funereal black. 

‘And do you know,’ said he, ‘how new and 
strange it is to me, almost alarming, to talk with 
invisible beings? Your very voices are masked 


xi DISENCHANTED 149 


by those thick veils. Now and then I am vaguely 
afraid of you.’ 

“But it was agreed between us that we were 
merely souls.’ 

‘True, but souls reveal themselves to other 
souls chiefly by the expression of their eyes. 
Now I cannot even imagine what your eyes are 
like. I fully believe that they are bright and 
honest, but if they were as fearful as those of 
ghouls I should not know it. I assure you it 
really discomposes me, frightens me, repels me. 
At least do one thing, let me have your portraits 
unveiled. On my honour, I will return them to 
you at once, or else, if some disaster should part 
us, [ will burn them.’ 

At first they were speechless. With their 
hereditary Moslem traditions, to show their faces 
seemed to them an impropriety which would at 
once make their acquaintance with André a guilty 
thing. Finally it was Melek who spoke, pledging 
her sisters, deliberately, but in a somewhat arch 
tone which had a suspicious ring in it: ‘Our 
photos without either tcharchaf or yashmak? 
That is what you want? Well, give us time to 
take them and you shall have them next week. 
But now let us all sit down. It is for Djenan to 
speak; she has a great favour to ask of you. 
Light a cigarette; ; you will find the time less long 
at any rate.’ 

‘My petition is from us all,’ said Djenan, ‘on 
behalf of all our Turkish sisters. Monsieur 
Lhéry, undertake our cause; write a book in 
defence of the unhappy Moslem women of the 


150 DISENCHANTED XIII 


twentieth century. Tell all the world, since you 
know that it is true, that we now have a soul; 
that it is no longer possible to break us like chattels. 
If you do this you will be blessed by thousands. 
Will you ?’ 

André sat silent, as they had done before at his 
request for the portraits. He did not see the 
book at all; and, besides, he had promised him- 
self an idle time at Constantinople, to play the 
oriental, not to write a book. 

‘What a difficult thing you expect of me! A 
book to prove a case? You, who seem to have 
read me with care and know me well — do you 
think that would be at all like me? Besides, 
what do I know of the Moslem woman of the 
twentieth century ?’ 

‘We will inform you.’ 

‘But you are going away.’ 

‘We will write to you. 

‘Oh! Letters, written things, you know — | 
can never tell anything I have not seen and 
lived in.’ 

‘We shall come back.’ 

‘But then you will be compromised. People 
will inquire whence I derived such information. 
And they will certainly find out at last.’ 

“We are ready to sacrifice ourselves for the 
cause! What better use can we make of our 
poor little lives — aimless and unprofitable lives? 
We are all three eager to devote ourselves to 
alleviating misery, found a good work, like 
European women. And even that is forbidden 
us; we must sit idle and hidden behind our 


XI DISENCHANTED 151 


lattices. Well, we mean to be the inspiring spirit 
of that book; it will be our deed of charity, and 
if we lose our freedom or our life for it, so much 
the worse!’ 

André still tried to escape: 

“Remember, too, that I am not independent in 
Constantinople, I have a place in an Embassy. 
And there is another thing: I meet with such 
confiding hospitality from the Turks. Among 
the men whom you regard as your oppressors, I| 
have friends who are very dear to me.’ 

“Ah, well, you must make your choice: we or 
they. Take it or leave it. Make up your mind.’ 

“Is it so urgent as that? Then, naturally and 
of course, I choose you. And I obey.’ 

“At last!’ and she gave him her little hand, 
which he dutifully kissed. 

They talked on. for nearly two hours, in a 
semblance of security such as they had never 
before known. 

“But are you not quite exceptional ?’ he asked, 
astonished to find them wrought up to such a 
pitch of desperation and rebellion. 

“We are the rule, on the contrary. Take 
twenty Turkish women where you please — women 
of the upper class of course — and you will not 
find one who does not talk as we do. They are 
brought up as prodigies, blue-stockings, musical 
dolls, objects of luxury for their father and their 
master, and then treated as odalisques and slaves, 
like our ancestresses a century ago! No, we can 
bear it no longer — we can bear it no longer!’ 

“Take care lest I plead your cause from the 


152 DISENCHANTED XIII 


other point of view; I am a man of the past. I 
should be quite capable of it, believe me. Down 
with governesses, transcendental professors, and 
all the books which extend the realm of human 
misery! Back to the peace of our forefathers !’ 

“Well, if need should be, we would make the 
best of such pleading, especially as any retro- 
gression is impossible, no one can turn the stream 
of time backward. The essential point is to 
move the world at last to pity, to make it under- 
stood that we are martyrs, we, the women of the 
transition between those of the past and those of 
the future. That is what we want you to make 
heard, and after that you will be the friend of us 
all — all.’ 

André still hoped for some unforeseen con- 
tingency that might save him from writing their 
book. Still, he felt the bewitching influence of 
their noble indignation, and their sweet voices 
thrilling with hatred of the tyranny of man. 

By degrees, too, he became used to their having 
no faces. To give him a light for his cigarette, or 
hand him the microscopic cup out of which 
Turkish coffee is sipped, they came and went, 
elegant, fairy-like, and eager, but still black 
spectres; and when they stooped, the veil over 
their features hung forward like a Capuchin’s 
long beard added in derision to these youthful 
forms of grace. 

Their safety was, in fact, merely illusory in 
this house at the end of the blind alley, which in 
the event of a surprise was a perfect trap. When, 
now and then, a step was heard outside on the 


XIII DISENCHANTED 153 


flagstones fringed with starved grass, they looked 
out anxiously through the protecting bars: some 
old turbaned Turk going home, or the water-seller 
of the district with his goat-skin across his back. 

Theoretically, they were all to call each other 
by their real names and nothing more. But 
neither of them dared be the first, and they used 
no names at all. 

Once they had a shudder of alarm: the copper 
knocker on the outer door rang out under an 
impatient hand, rousing a terrible echo in the 
midst of the silence of these dead houses, and 
they all rushed to the latticed windows: it was 
a lady in a black silk tcharchaf, leaning on a stick 
and apparently bent by great age. 

‘It is nothing of any consequence,’ they said. 
“We had foreseen this. Only she will have to 
come into this room.’ 

“Then I must hide ?’ 

“That even is unnecessary. Go, Melek, and 
let her in, and you will say just what we agreed 
on. She will only pass through, and we shall see 
her no more. As she passes you, she may per- 
haps ask you in Turkish, How 1s the little invalid ? 
And you have only to reply — in Turkish, too, of 
course — that he 1s much better since this morning.’ 

A minute later the old dame came through, 
her veil down, feeling the poor carpets with the 
end of her crutch. And she did not fail to ask 
André: 

“Well, and is the dear boy better?’ 

“Much better,’ said he, ‘since this morning 
particularly.’ 


154 DISENCHANTED XIII 


“That’s well, thank you, thank you,’ and she 
disappeared through a small door at the end of 
the harem. André asked for no explanation. 
He was wrapt in the improbabilities of an Eastern 
tale; if they had said to him: ‘The fairy Cara- 
bosse will come out from under this divan, will 
strike the walls with a touch of her wand, and it 
will become a palace,’ he would have accepted the 
statement without comment. 

After the coming of the lady with the stick 
they had still a few minutes to spare; when the 
time came they dismissed him with the promise 
that they would meet once more at whatever 
risk: ‘Go, friend of us all, go to the end of the 
alley at a leisurely, dreamy pace, telling your 
rosary, and we all three, through the lattices, will 
watch your dignified retreat.’ 


XIV 


AN old eunuch, stealthy and speechless, came on 
Thursday to bring André notice of a meeting on 
the day but one following, in the same place and 
at the same hour, and with it some large port- 
folios carefully wrapped and sealed. 

‘Ah!’ thought he, ‘the promised photographs !’ 
And, impatient to look into their eyes at last, he 
tore open the paper. 

They were portraits, no doubt, without tchar- 
chaf or yashmak, and fully signed, if you please, 
in French and in Turkish: Djenan, Zeyneb, and 
Melek. His friends had even got into full dress 
for the occasion — handsome evening dresses, cut 
low, and quite Parisian. But Zeyneb and Melek 
presented their backs very squarely, showing only 
the edge and tip of their little ears; while Djenan, 
the only one seen in front, held a large feather fan 
which hid all her face, and even her hair. 


On Saturday, in the mysterious house where 
they met for the second time, nothing tragical 
occurred, no fairy Carabosse appeared. ‘We are 
here, Dyjenan explained, ‘in the house of my 
nurse, who never in her life refused me anything; 
the sick boy is her son. The old dame is her 

155 


156 DISENCHANTED XIV 


mother; Melek had told her that you were a 
fresh physician to see him. Now do you under- 
stand? Still I feel some remorse at making her 
play such a dangerous part. However, as it is 
our last day. 

They fee for two hours without mentioning 
the book; they no doubt feared to sicken him of 
the subject if they talked too much about it. 
And he was pledged; that point was gained. 

And they had so much else to say, long arrears 
of things, it seemed; for it was true that they had 
lived for years in fi companionship through his 
books, and this was one of the rare instances when 
he, who usually was so annoyed now at having 
bared his heart to thousands of readers, did not 
regret one of his most secret revelations. After 
all, how contemptible were the shrugs of those 
who do not understand, in the balance against the 
fervid affection he had won here and there at the 
opposite ends of the earth, from the souls of 
unknown women —the only thing perhaps for 
which one ever cares to write! 

This day there was unclouded confidence, 
understanding, and friendship between André 
Lhéry and the three little spectres of his harem. 
They knew a great deal about him by reading; 
and as he on his part knew nothing about them, he 
listened more than he talked. Zeyneb and Melek 
told him of their wretched marriages, and the hope- 
less imprisonment that awaited them. Dyenan, on 
the contrary, told him nothing so far about herself. 

Besides the intimate sympathy which had so 
quickly allied them, there was a surprise for them 


XIV DISENCHANTED 157 


all in finding each other so gay. André was 
fascinated by the high spirits of their nation, and 
of their youth, which in spite of everything were 
still theirs, and which they indulged the more 
readily now that they had ceased to be shy of 
him. And he, whom they had pictured to them- 
selves as gloomy, who had been described to them 
as icy and distant, had at once taken off that mask 
in their presence, and was perfectly simple, ready 
to laugh at anything, at heart much younger than 
his years, with a vein even of childish roguishness. 
This was his first experience of conversation with 
Turkish women of rank. And they had never in 
their lives talked to a man of any class. In this 
humble house, all decrepitude and shadow, buried 
in the heart of old Stamboul, amid ruins and 
sepulchres, they had achieved the impossible merely 
by meeting there to exchange ideas. Being re- 
ciprocally such entirely new elements in life, they 
were surprised, amazed, to find that they were not 
altogether dissimilar ; but no, on the contrary, 
they were in absolute communion of feeling and 
impressions, like friends who had always known 
each other. For their part, all they knew of life 
in general, of European things, of the evolution of 
Western minds, they had learnt in solitude through 
books. And to-day, in this almost miraculous 
intercourse with a man from the West, and a man 
whose name was famous, they found themselves on 
his level; he treated them as his equals, as intel- 
lects, as souls, and the effect on them was a sort 
of mental intoxication such as they had never 
experienced before. 


158 DISENCHANTED XIV 


It was Zeyneb who served their little repast on 
the low table, covered to-day with green and silver 
satin, strewn with red roses. As for Djenan, 
she sat more motionless than ever, a little apart, 
never stirring a fold of her elegiac veil; she talked 
more perhaps than the other two, and her questions 
especially showed greater depth of thought, but she 
did not move; she was bent, it would seem, on 
remaining the most inaccessible of the three, 
physically the least incorporate. Once, however, 
her arm raised the tcharchaf, giving a glimpse of 
one of her sleeves — a wide sleeve, very full, as was 
the fashion that spring, and made of lemon- 
coloured silk gauze with a pattern in green — two 
colours which André’s eyes were not to forget, as 
proofs in evidence another day. 

The world without was more melancholy than 
it had been the previous week. The cold had 
come back in the full flower of May; they could 
hear the wind from the Black Sea whistle at the 
doors, as if it were winter; all Stamboul was 
shivering under a sky shrouded with black clouds, 
and there was dim twilight in the dingy latticed 
little harem. 

Suddenly the copper knocker on the outer 
door, always alarming, made them all start. 

‘It is they,’ cried Melek, leaning out at once 
to look through the window bars. ‘Yes; they 
have managed to get out! How glad I am!’ 

She flew down to open the door, and soon 
came up again, following two other black dominoes 
with impenetrable veils, who seemed also to be 
young and elegant. 


XIV DISENCHANTED 159 


‘Monsieur André Lhéry,’ said Djenan, intro- 
ducing him; ‘two friends of mine — their names 
do not matter, I suppose ?’ 

‘Two spectre-women, and nothing more,’ said 
the ladies, intentionally emphasising the word 
which André had perhaps used too frequently in 
one of his later books; and they held out small 
white-gloved hands. They spoke French in very 
gentle tones, and with perfect ease. 

‘Our friends here have told us,’ said one of 
them, ‘that you are going to write a book in behalf 
of the Moslem woman of the twentieth century, 
and we wished so much to thank you.’ 

‘What is the title to be?’ asked the other, 
seating herself on the shabby divan, with languid 
grace. 

‘Dear me, I have not yet thought of that. 
The whole scheme is so new, and I have, I must 
confess, been taken a little unawares. We will 
take votes as to the title, if you like. Let me 
see! I would suggest “ Disenchanted.’’’ 

**Disenchanted,”’ repeated Dyjenan thought- 
fully. ‘One is disenchanted with life when one 
has lived. But we, on the contrary, only ask to 
live. We are not disenchanted, we are annihilated, 
sequestered, stifled 

“Yes, there, I have hit on the title,’ cried little 
Melek, who could not be serious to-day. ‘“‘Stifled !”’ 
And it so well describes our state of mind under 
the thick veils we wear to meet you in, Monsieur 
Lhéry. For you cannot imagine how difficult it 
is to breathe under them.’ 

‘I was intending to ask you why you wear 





160 DISENCHANTED XIV 


them. Could you not, in the presence of a friend, 
be satisfied to dress like all the women we meet in 
Stamboul? Veiled, of course, but with a certain 
lightness, allowing something to be guessed: the 
profile, the brow, sometimes even the eyes — while 
you show less than nothing.’ 

‘And you know,’ added Melek, ‘it does not 
look at all the correct thing to be so hidden. As 
a rule, when you meet a mysterious personage in 
the street wearing a threefold veil, you may safely 
say, she is going where she ought not to go. We 
ourselves, for instance, to be sure. And this is so 
well known that other women when they meet 
them, smile and nudge each other.’ 

‘Come, come, Melek,’ said Djenan in gentle 
reproof. ‘Do not talk scandal like a little Perote. 
“Disenchanted,” yes, it sounds well, but the mean- 
ing is a little beside the mark.’ 

“This was my notion of it. Do you remember 
in the fine ancient legends, the Walkiire who slept in 
her subterranean stronghold; the Sleeping Beauty 
who slept in her castle in the heart of a wood? 
But alas! the spell was broken, and they woke up. 
Well, you Moslem ladies have been sleeping for 
ages in peaceful slumbers, guarded by tradition 
and dogma. And suddenly the Evil Magician, the 
wicked West Wind, has passed over you and broken 
the charm; you are all waking up at once, waking 
up to the woe of living, to the suffering of know- 
ledge.’ 

Djenan, however, was only half-persuaded. She 
evidently had a title of her own choice, but would 
not yet tell it. 


XIV DISENCHANTED 161 


The new-comers were rebels too, and of the 
deepest dye. There was much talk in Constan- 
tinople that spring of a young woman of rank who 
had fled to Paris; the adventure had turned all 
heads in the harems, and these two spectre-women 
dreamed of it dangerously. 

“You, perhaps,’ said Dyjenan, ‘might find 
happiness there, because you have some Western 
blood in your veins. Their grandmother, Mon- 
sieur Lhéry, was a Frenchwoman, who came to 
Constantinople, married a Turk, and embraced 
Islam. But I, Zeyneb, Melek, leave our Turkish 
land! No; sofaras we three are concerned it is an 
impossible form of deliverance. Worse humilia- 
tions if they must be endured, harder slavery! But 
here we must die, and sleep at Eyoub.’ 

‘And how right you are!’ exclaimed André in 
conclusion. 


They still said that they were going away to 
be absent for a time. Was it true? At any rate, 
when parting from them this time he felt sure 
they should meet again. He was bound to them 
by the book, and perhaps by something more, by 
a tie of a kind quite undefinable as yet, but already 
tenacious and dear to them, which had begun to 
grow up between Djenan and himself. 

Melek, who had assumed the duties of the 
doorkeeper of this strange house, showed him out, 
and during their brief téte-2-téte in the squalid 
dark passage he reproached her for her trick in 
the faceless photographs. She made no reply, 
followed him half-way down the tumble-down 

M 


162 DISENCHANTED XIV 


stairs, to be sure that he knew how to unfasten 
the bolts and lock of the outer door. 

Then, when on the threshold he turned back 
to bid her good-bye, he saw her above him, show- 
ing her white teeth in a smile, smiling with her 
little pert nose, saucy but not ill-natured, and her 
fine large grey eyes, and all her delightful little 
face, and her twenty years. She held up her veil 
with both hands, showing the golden red curls 
that framed her forehead. And her smile seemed 
to say: “Yes, it is I, Melek, your little friend 
Melek, whom I beg to introduce to you. And 
you know it is not as if I were one of the others, 
Djenan, for instance! I really do not count. 
Good-bye, André Lhéry, good-bye.’ 

It was only for the space of a lightning flash, 
and the veil was dropped. André softly spoke 
his thanks, in Turkish, for he was almost outside 
in the gloomy blind alley. 

Out here it was cold under the black clouds 
and the Siberian wind. The day fell as dismally 
as in December. It was in such weather as this 
that Stamboul most poignantly brought memories 
of his youth, for the brief frenzy of his residence 
at Eyoub, so long ago, had had winter for its 
background. As he crossed the deserted square 
in front of the great mosque of Sultan Selim, he 
recalled with cruel precision having once before 
crossed it in just such an hour, and just such 
solitude, under a lashing north wind, one dreary 
evening twenty-five years since. And the image 
of the dead girl he had loved completely effaced 
that of Djenan. 


XV | 


On the following day he happened to be walking 
up the high street of Pera in the society of some 
pleasant friends from the French Embassy who 
had also wandered thither —the Saint-Enogats, 
of whom he was beginning to see a good deal. A 
black coupé came by, in which he vaguely perceived 
the form of a lady in a tcharchaf. Madame de 
Saint-Enogat bowed very slightly to the veiled 
lady, who at once, a little nervously, closed the 
blind of the carriage. This abrupt movement 
revealed to André, beneath the tcharchaf, a sleeve 
of lemon-coloured silk with a pattern in green, 
which he was quite sure he had seen the day 
before. 

‘What, do you bow to a Turkish lady in the 
street?’ he asked. 

‘It was quite incorrect, no doubt, to do such 
a thing, especially as I am with you and my hus- 
band.’ 

‘And who was she?’ 

‘Djenan Tewfik Pasha, one of the flowers of 
elegance of young Turkey.’ 

‘Aha! And pretty?’ 

‘More than pretty — exquisite.’ 

‘And rich, to judge by her carriage ?’ 

163 


164 DISENCHANTED xv 


“They say she has the revenues of a province 
in Asia. By the way, one of your great admirers, 
dear Master.’ She slily emphasised the words 
‘dear Master,’ knowing that they made his skin 
creep. “Last week at the X Legation all the 
men-servants were sent out for an afternoon’s 
holiday, you may remember, on purpose to give a 
tea without any men to which Turkish ladies could 
come. She came; and a woman there ran you 
down — oh, but ran you down!’ 

“You ?’ 

‘Oh, dear no. It does not amuse me to abuse 
you unless you are by. It was the Comtesse 
dvA Well, Madame Tewfik Pasha took 
your part, and with enthusiasm — and it strikes me 
now that you seem greatly interested in her.’ 

‘I — why, how can I be? A Turkish woman, 
as you know, simply does not exist for us men. 
No; but I noticed the coupé — very well turned 
out. I often meet it.’ 

‘Often! Then you are in luck, for she never 

oes out.’ 

“Indeed she does; and generally I see two 
other women with her, who both seem young.’ 

‘Perhaps her cousins, the daughters of Mehmed 
Bey, the former Minister.’ : 

‘And what are their names, these Mehmed 
Beys ?’ 

‘The elder is Zeyneb, and the other Melek — I 
think.’ 

Madame de Saint-Enogat had, no doubt, 
scented something, but was far too sweet and 
too loyal to be dangerous. 








XVI 


Tuey had certainly left Constantinople, for 
some days later André Lhéry received the follow- 
ing letter from Djenan with the postmark of 
Salonica: 


May 18, 1904. 


‘Our friend, you who love roses, why are you 
not here? You who feel and love the East as no 
other Western man can, oh, why cannot you find 
your way to the old-world palace where we have 
settled for a few weeks, behind high gloomy walls 
all hung with flowers? 

“We are staying with one of my grandparents, 
a long way from the town, in the heart of the 
country. Everything around is old —old, men 
and things alike. Nothing is young here but our- 
selves and the spring flowers, and our three little 
Circassian slaves, who are happy in their lot and 
cannot understand our grievances. 

“It is five years since we were here last, and we 
had forgotten what our life here was like — com- 
pared to this our life in Stamboul seems almost 
freedom and ease. Flung back into this atmos- 
phere, from which we are divided by a whole 
generation, we feel like foreigners here. We are 

165 


166 DISENCHANTED XVI 


truly loved, but our modern spirit is at the same 
time hated. Out of deference, and for the sake 
of peace, we try to submit to external forms, and 
mould our appearance on the fashions and manners 
of the past. But that is not enough. The newly 
born soul is felt beneath it all, bursting through, 
palpitating, vibrant, and it cannot be forgiven for 
having emancipated itself, not even for existing. 

‘And yet what infinite efforts, what sacrifices 
and pangs, has that emancipation cost us! You, 
a Western, can never have known these struggles. 
Your soul has no doubt expanded at ease in the 
atmosphere congenial to it. You can never under- 
stand. 

‘Oh! our friend, how incongruous we should 
seem to you if you could see us here, incongru- 
ous but at the same time in harmony. If you 
could but see us in the depths of the old garden, 
where I am writing to you in this kiosque of carved 
woodwork, inlaid with tiles, while a fountain sings 
in its marble basin! All round it are divans if 
the old fashion, covered with faded pink silk in 
which a few threads of silver still shine here and 
there. And outside there is a profusion, a mad 
prodigality of the pale roses that flower in bunches, 
and which in your world are called bridal bouquets. 
Your three friends do not wear European dresses 
here, nor modern tcharchafs; they have assumed 
the garb of their grandmothers. For, André, we 
have rummaged in old chests to exhume the gar- 
ments which were the pride of the imperial harem 
in the days of Abdul Medjib; the lady-in-waiting 


who wore them was our great-grandmother. You 


XVI DISENCHANTED 167 


know those dresses? They have long trains, and 
sashes which would also train on the ground, but 
they are picked up and crossed to enable us to 
walk. Ours were once pink, green, yellow — hues 
as dead now as those of dried flowers kept between 
the leaves of a book, and are no more than a 
reflection dying away. 

‘In these dresses, so full of memories, and 
under this kiosque by the water, we have read your 
last book, The Land of Kabul — our own copy 
which you yourself gave us. The artist in you 
could not have dreamed of a more fitting scene 
for such reading. The infinity of roses falling 
on every side made heavy curtains to the windows, 
and the spring of this southern land is heady with 
perfume. So now we have seen Kabul. 

“In spite of this, my friend, I like this book 
less well than its elder brothers; there is not 
enough in it of you. I shed no tears, as I have 
so often done in reading other things written by 
you, which were not all sad, but which touched 
me to anguish nevertheless. Oh, do not write any 
more only with your brain! I fancy you do not 
wish to put yourself again on the stage. But 
what can it matter what people say of it? Write 
again from your heart; is it too weary, too torpid 
now, that we no longer feel its throbs in your 
books as of old? 

/ “Evening is falling, and the hour is so beautiful 
in these gardens of stricken stillness, where the 
very flowers now seem pensive! I could stay 
here for ever, listening to the tinkle of the thread 
of water in the marble basin, though its tune never 


168 DISENCHANTED XVI 


varies and tells only of the monotony of the days. 
This spot, alas! might so easily be a paradise; I 
feel that in my soul, as well as all around me, 
everything might be so happy; that life and glad- 
ness might be one and the same thing — with 
liberty! 

“We must go indoors; I must bid you fare- 
well, my friend. Here comes a tall negro to 
fetch us, for it is growing late, and the slaves 
have begun to sing and play the lute to amuse the 
old ladies. We shall presently be made to dance, 
and forbidden to speak French — which will not 
prevent us from going to sleep each with a book 
by you under her pillow. 

‘Farewell, our friend. Do you sometimes think 
of the three little featureless shades? 

‘DJENAN.’ 


XVII 


In the cemetery under the walls of Stamboul, 
thanks to the intervention of André’s Turkish 
friends, the restoration of the humble tomb was 
finished. And André Lhéry, who had not dared 
to show himself in the vicinity so long as the 
masons were at work, went on the 3oth of the 
sweet month of May to pay his first visit to the 
dead under her new flag-stones. 

On reaching the sacred wood he could see from 
afar the tomb so clandestinely repaired, which had 
the brightness of new things in the midst of the 
grey decay that surrounded it. The two marble 
slabs — that which is placed at the head of the dead 
and that which stands at the feet — rose up straight 
and white among those near covered with mosses, 
and leaning over or fallen altogether. The blue 
painted background, too, had been renewed, be- 
tween the letters of the inscription, which shone 
in bright new gilding; the inscription which, 
after a short verse on death, said ‘Pray for the 
soul of Nedjibeh, daughter of Ali Djianghir Effendi, 
who died on the 18th of Mubarrem 1297.’ Al- 
ready the recent touch of the workman had ceased 
to be conspicuous, for all round the thicker slab 
which served as a base, mint and thyme, and all 

169 


170 DISENCHANTED XVII 


the fragrant vegetation of stony soils had hurried 
into life under the May sunshine. As to the tall 
cypress trees, which had seen the passing of Khalifs 
and of centuries, they were exactly the same as 
André had always known them, and the same no 
doubt as they had been a century ago; in the 
same attitudes, with the same petrified gestures of 
their boughs, in colour just like dry bones, uplifted 
to the sky like long dead arms. The ancient 
walls of Stamboul showed in long perspective their 
line of bastions and broken battlements in the 
sempiternal solitude, now more complete perhaps 
than ever. 

The day was limpid and lovely. The earth and 
the cypress trees smelt sweet; the resignation of 
these graveyards without end was attractive to-day, 
soothing and restful; it was tempting to linger here, 
to share, if possible, the peace of all these sleepers, 
resting so deeply under the wild thyme and grass. 

ndré came away comforted and almost happy 
at having at last been able to fulfil this pious duty, 
so difficult to accomplish, which had for a long 
time haunted his night thoughts. For years, in 
the course of his travels and the vicissitudes of his 
wandering life, even at the furthest ends of the 
earth, he had often in sleepless nights thought of 
this task, which seemed like one of the impossible 
feats of a bad dream: the restoration of crumbling 
tombstones in a sacred cemetery in Stamboul. And 
now it was done. And now the beloved little 
tomb seemed to him to be all his own — now that 
it was raised again by his act, and it was he who 
had made it strong enough to last. 


XVII DISENCHANTED ia 


As his spirit felt quite Turkish in this mild and 
limpid evening, and the full moon would ere long 
shine bluely on the sea of Marmora, he returned 
to Stamboul after nightfall, and went up to the 
very heart of the Moslem quarter, to sit in the 
open air on the square that had now become fa- 
miliar to him once more, in front of the mosque of 
Sultan Fatih. He would sit there and dream, in 
the cool purity of the evening air and the delicious 
Eastern peace, smoking his narghileh; with all 
that dying magnificence about him, and all that 
decrepitude and religious silence and prayer. 

By the time he arrived there all the little coffee 
shops had lighted their twinkling lamps; lanterns 
hanging from the trees, old oil lanterns, also gave 
a subdued light, and all around on benches or on 
wooden stools, turbaned dreamers were smoking 
and conversing in few words and low tones. The 
little murmur of the hundreds of narghilehs could 
be heard, the water bubbling in the glass as the 
smoker draws a deep, steady breath. One was 
brought to him with scraps of live charcoal on the 
bowl of Persian tobacco, and over him presently, 
as over all the men about him, there came a very 
soothing languor, quite harmless and favourable 
to thought. Under those trees, hung with lanterns 
that gave scarcely any light, he sat exactly facing 
the mosque, divided from it by the width of the 
little square. ‘The square was empty and in deep 
twilight, the paving-stones all loose and alternating 
with earth and holes; the wall of the mosque, tall, 
solemn, and imposing, filled up all the opposite 
side, as stern as a rampart and with only one 


172 DISENCHANTED XVII 


opening: the arched door, at least thirty feet high, 
which formed the entrance to the sacred precincts. 
Beyond, to right and left, in the distance was the 
confusion of darkness, blackness — trees perhaps, 
cypress trees, vaguely marking a forest of the dead 
— darkness stranger than elsewhere, the peace and 
mystery of Islam. The moon, which had risen an 
hour or two ago behind the mountains of Asia, 
now began to show itself above this mass of the 
Sultan Fatih; slowly it came up, quite round, a 
disc of bluish silver, and so entire, so aérial above 
the huge thing of earth, giving so complete an idea 
of its vast remoteness and its isolation in space! 

The azure-tinted light spread gradually over 
everything. It fell on the grave, devout smokers, 
while the square was still overshadowed by the 
high sacred walls. At the same time this lunar 
gleam brought with it a cool evening mist exhaled 
by the sea, so diaphanous that it had not been 
perceptible before, but which now became part of 
the filmy blue, enveloping everything and casting a 
vaporous veil over the mosque which had looked 
so ponderous. The two minarets, soaring to the 
sky, seemed transparent, soaked in the moonshine, 
and it made him giddy to gaze up at them in the 
haze of blue light, they looked so tall, so frail, and 
immaterial. 

At this same hour there was on the other shore 
of the Golden Horn — not very far off in reality, 
and yet at a quite immeasurable distance — a city, 
called European, just beginning its nocturnal life: 
Pera. There Levantines of every nationality, 
and alas some young Turks too, believing that 


XVII DISENCHANTED 173 


they had achieved an enviable degree of civilisa- 
tion by wearing the dress of Parisians — more or 
less — were crowding into the beer-shops, into 
idiotic music-halls, or round ‘poker’ tables in the 
clubs of the ‘upper ten’of Pera. What poor crea- 
tures there are in this world! 

Very poor creatures these, excited, unbalanced, 
empty-headed, contemptible, bereft of ideal and of 
hope. Very poor creatures, as compared with the 
simple sages here, waiting only till the Muezzin 
should utter his call high in the air to go and 
_ prostrate themselves in full trust and faith before 
the incomprehensible Allah, and ready ere long to 
die possessing their soul in peace, as men set forth 
on a happy journey. 

Now they are beginning their chanting call — 
those voices for which they wait. Men who dwell 
in the tops of those shafts, lost in the high lu- 
minous haze, hosts of the air, near neighbours 
it might seem of the moon to-night, suddenly 
break into song like birds, in a sort of thrilling 
rapture that has come over them. These men 
have been chosen for their rare gifts of voice, or 
they could not be heard from the summit of those 
prodigious towers. Not a sound is lost; not a 
word of what they chant fails to come down to us, 
clear, fluent, and articulate. 

One by one the dreamers rise, go into the 
broad shadow which still shrouds the square, cross 
it and slowly make their way to the sacred door. 
In little groups at first of three, four, five, the 
white turbans and long robes disappear into the 
house of prayer. And more come, from all sides, 


174 DISENCHANTED XVII 


out of dark purlieus, the black shade of trees, of 
streets, of shut-up houses. ‘They come in noiseless 
slippers, walking in calm and grave meditation. 
The vast archway which invites them all, pierced 
in the great stern wall, has an ancient lantern 
supposed to light it; it hangs from the centre, 
and its feeble flame is yellow and dead under the 
splendid glory of moonlight that fills the sky. 
And while the voices above chant on, a streaming 
procession gathers of heads turbaned in white 
muslin, and is presently swallowed up under the 
great portico. 

As soon as the benches on the square were 
deserted, André Lhéry also made his way to the 
mosque, the last of all, feeling himself the most 
wretched of all, for he had no prayer to say. He 
went in and stood near the door. Two or three 
thousand turbans were there, and had instinctively 
arranged themselves in long rows one _ behind 
another, facing the Mihrab. Above the silence a 
voice seemed to float, a plaintive voice, so pro- 
foundly melancholy, chanting 1 in a very high pitch 
like the Muezzins, that it seemed to die away of 
exhaustion; then to revive once more and vibrate 
tremulously under the high domes, lingering, 
protracted as if slowly expiring, dying at last only 
to begin afresh. ‘This voice was leading the two 
thousand prayers of this crowd of men; at its 
bidding they first fell on their knees, then prostrate 
in yet deeper humiliation, and finally, all at once, as 
one man, they struck the ground with their fore- 
heads with a regular movement all together, as if 
thrown down by that sad, sweet monotone passing 


XVII DISENCHANTED is 


over their heads, dying away at moments to the 
merest murmur, but nevertheless filling the vast 
body of the mosque. 

The sanctuary was but feebly lighted by little 
oil lamps at the end of long wires hanging at 
intervals from the hollow vault ; but for the 
perfect whiteness of the walls it would have been 
difficult to see anything. Now and again there 
was a flutter of wings — the tame pigeons which 
are allowed to build their nests high up in the 
clerestory, disturbed by the little lights and the 
soft rustle of so many robes, took to flight and 
wheeled about fearlessly over the thousand white 
turbans. And the devotion was so complete, the 
faith so deep, when every head was bowed to the 
incantation of that small feeble voice, that one 
might have fancied they rose up like the vapour 
from a censer in that silent and multitudinous 
orison. 

Oh! may Allah and the Khalif long protect 
and isolate this religious, meditative people, kind 
and loyal, and one of the noblest in the world; 
capable of terrible energy, of sublime heroism in 
the battle-field if their native land is threatened, 
or if the cry is Islam and the Faith! 

Prayer ended, André returned with the rest of 
the faithful to sit outside and smoke under the 
glorious moon, still rising higher. He thought 
with very calm satisfaction of the restored tomb, 
which at this hour must stand out so white, so 
upright and pretty in the clear beaming night. 
And this duty accomplished he now might leave 
the country, since he had already decided that he 


176 DISENCHANTED xvi 


need only wait for that. But the oriental charm 
had gradually taken entire possession of him 
again; and besides, those mysterious three who 
would return with the summer, he must hear 
their voices once more. At the beginning he had 
felt remorseful over the adventure, considering 
the trustful hospitality shown him by his friends 
the Turks; this evening, on the contrary, he felt 
it no more. ‘After all,’ he reflected, ‘I am 
offending nobody’s honour. Between Dyjenan, 
who is young enough to be my daughter, and me 
— who have never even seen her, and probably 
never shall see her — how can there be anything 
on either side but a pleasant and singular friend- 
ship ?’ 

Auid in fact he had that very day had a letter 
from her which seemed to put everything into the 
right point of view. 


“One day, for a whim’ — she wrote from her 
palace in the wood of the Sleeping Beauty, which, 
however, did not alter the fact that she was very 
thoroughly awakened — ‘One day, for a whim, in 
deadly moral abandonment, irritated by the impas- 
sable barrier against which we were always fighting 
and which hurt us so, we valiantly set out to dis- 
cover what sort of a person you could possibly be. 
Our first wish for an interview was just defiance 
and curiosity. 

“We found André Lhéry very unlike what we 
had pictured him. And now the real you, whom 
you have allowed us to know so well, we can 
never forget. Still, I must explain these words 


XVII DISENCHANTED 177 


which from a woman to a man seem almost like 
humiliating advances. We shall never forget you, 
because, thanks to you, we have learnt what it is 
that must make life a joy to the women of the 
West: intellectual intercourse with an artist. We 
shall never forget you, because you have given us 
a little friendly sympathy without even knowing 
whether we are handsome or old harridans; you 
have cared for that better part of us, our souls, of 
which our masters hitherto have overlooked the 
existence; you have enabled us to perceive how 
precious the pure friendship of a man may be.’ 


It had really all been as he had supposed, a 
gentle flirtation of souls, and nothing more; a 
spiritual flirtation, with danger in it no doubt, but 
a material danger, no moral risk. And it would 
all continue to be as white as snow, as white as the 
domes of the mosque in the moonshine. 

He had this letter from Djenan in his pocket; 
it had reached him but just now in Pera; and he 
took it out to read it again quietly by the light of 
a lamp hanging in a tree hard by. 


“And now,’ she went on, ‘when we are away 
from you, how sad it is to relapse into torpor. 
Your life, so full of colour and movement, cannot 
enable you to conceive of ours — so grey, made up 
of the slow years which leave no memories. We 
always know beforehand what the morrow will 
bring — just nothing; and that every to-morrow 
till our dying day will glide on with the same 
insipid smoothness, in the same neutral hue. We 

N 


178 DISENCHANTED xvi 


live a life of pearl-grey days, padded with a 
perpetual feather bed which makes us long for 
flints and thorns. 

‘In the novels which come to us from Europe 
there are always people who in the evening of life 
bewail their lost illusions. But at least they had 
had some illusions; they had once in their lives 
set out in pursuit of a mirage! Whereas we, 
André, have never been allowed a chance of 
having any, and when our life is drawing to a 
close we shall not have even the melancholy 
satisfaction of mourning over them. Oh, how 
much more keenly do we feel this since you came 
into our lives. 

“Those hours in your society in the old house 
near the mosque of Sultan Selim! We there 
realised a dream, such as we formerly would never 
have dared to hope for; to have André Lhéry to 
ourselves, to be treated by him as thinking beings 
and not as playthings, to some extent, indeed, as 
friends, so far as that he revealed to us some of the 
secret recesses of his soul! Little as we knew of 
European life and the manners of your world, we 
appreciated at its true value the trustfulness with 
which you met our indiscretions. Oh, for we 
were very conscious of them, and without our 
veils should certainly never have been so bold! 

“Now, in perfect simplicity and sincerity of 
heart, we have a proposal to make to you. Hear- 
ing you speak the other day of a tomb that is 
dear to you, we all three had the same idea, 
which the same timidity prevented our uttering. 
But now, by letter, we venture. If we knew 


XVI DISENCHANTED 179 


where to find this tomb of the girl you loved, we 
might sometimes go there to pray and take care of 
it when you are gone, and let you hear about it. 
Perhaps it would be a pleasure to you to know 
that that spot of earth, where a piece of your 
heart rests, 1s not abandoned in utter indifference. 
And we, on our part, should be so happy to have 
this tangible tie to you when you are far away; 
the memory of your lost friend might perhaps 
preserve your present friends from being forgotten. 
“And when we pray for her who taught you to 
love our country, we will pray for you — for your 
deep distress is very apparent to us, I assure you. 
It is strange that I should feel myself alive to new 
hope since I have known you — I who had none 
left. But it ill beseems me to remind you that we 
have no right to limit our anticipations and ideals 
to this life, when you have written certain passages 
in your books. DJENAN.” 


For a very long time he had been wishing that 
he could commend Nedjibeh’s tomb to some one 
on the spot who would take care of it; above all 
he indulged in an apparently impossible dream of 
entrusting it to Turkish women, the sisters in race 
and in Islam of the dead girl. Thus Djenan’s 
offer not. only attached him the more to her, but 
fulfilled his desires, and set his conscience finally 
at rest in regard to the cemetery. 

Under the exquisite night he dreamed of the 
present; as a rule it appeared to him that, between 
the first rather childish period of his life in Turkey 
and the present hour, time had opened a wide gulf; 


180 DISENCHANTED XVII 


this evening, on the contrary, he saw them brought 
into connection in uninterrupted unity. Feelin 
himself still so alive, so youthful, while she had for 
so long been a mere handful of earth amid other 
earth in the darkness of the underworld, he experi- 
enced now agonising remorse and shame, and now 
— in his desperate love of life and youth — a senti- 
ment almost of egotistical triumph. 

For the second time that evening he associated 
in his mind Djenan and Nedjibeh; they were of 
the same race, both Circassians, and the living 
voice had again and again reminded him of the 
other; there were certain Turkish words which 
they pronounced with the same accent. 

Suddenly he was aware that it must be growing 
very late; he could hear, out by the dark thicket 
of trees, the bells of mules — bells that always 
sound so silvery clear in the night of Stamboul — 
announcing the arrival of market men bringing 
baskets of strawberries, flowers, beans, salads, all 
the May produce which the women of the people 
in white veils come to purchase at break of day. 
He looked about him and saw that he was left, 
the only smoker on the square. Almost all the 
lanterns were out in the little coffee-shops. The 
dew was falling and wetting his shoulders, and a 
boy, standing behind him leaning against a tree, 
was patiently waiting till he had done, to take in 
the narghileh and shut the shop door. 

It was near midnight. He rose and went down 
towards the bridges over the Golden Horn to cross 
to the other side where he lived. ‘There was, of 
course, no carriage to be had at such an hour. 


XVII DISENCHANTED 181 


Before quitting old Stamboul, asleep in the moon- 
light, he had a very long walk to take in the 
silence, through a city of dreams, between houses 
close-shut and still, where everything looked 
frosted by the broad beams of spectral, intensely 
white light. He had to pass through quarters 
where narrow streets went up or down, crossing in 
a maze as if to mislead the belated wanderer, who 
would have met no one to put him in the right 
way; but André knew every turning by heart. 
There were places, too, like deserts round the 
mosques, with their wilderness of domes wrapped 
by the moonshine in white winding-sheets. And 
in all directions there were graveyards, closed by 
ancient iron gates of Arabic design, and within, 
the tiny yellow flame of little oil lamps here and 
there on the tombs. Sometimes a dim gleam was 
seen through the window of a marble kiosque, and 
these, too, were lights for the dead, and it was 
better not to look in; there was nothing to be 
seen but crowds of tall catafalques devoured by 
time and powdered with dust. On the pavement 
lay the dogs, all dusky tan, sleeping in families, 
curled into large balls —the Turkish dogs, as 
easy-going as the Moslems who let them live, and 
incapable of being fierce even when you tread on 
them, so long as they understand that you did not 
do it on purpose. Not a sound, excepting at long 
intervals the thud on the ringing pavement of the 
watchman’s iron-shod staff. Old Stamboul, with 
all its sepulchres, was sleeping in religious peace 
that night, as it has done every night for three 
hundred years. 


XVIII 


AFTER the changeful skies of the month of May, 
when the blast from the Black Sea persistently 
sweeps up clouds charged with cold rain, the 
month of June had suddenly spread over Turkey 
the deep blue of the southern Orient. The annual 
migration of the residents of Constantinople to the 
Bosphorus was complete. All along the strait, 
which is stirred almost daily by the breeze, each 
Embassy had settled into summer quarters on the 
European shore. André Lhéry had been obliged 
to follow the exodus, and to find rooms at Therapia, 
a sort of cosmopolitan suburb, disfigured by 
monster hotels, where evening is made hideous by 
the orchestras of the cafés; but he commonly 
spent his time on the opposite side, the Asiatic 
shore, still deliciously oriental, shady, and still. 

Often, too, he went back to his beloved Stam- 
boul, only an hour away by boat down the Bos- 
phorus, always crowded with ships and barques 
going to and fro without ceasing. 

In the middle of the strait, between the two 
banks, which are fringed all the way with houses 
and palaces, plies the endless procession of steam- 
ships, enormous modern liners, or of the fine old- 
fashioned sailing vessels, working their way in 

182 


XVIII DISENCHANTED 183 


flotillas as soon as a favouring wind blows. Every- 
thing exported from the mouth of the Danube, 
from southern Russia, even from far-off Persia 
and Bokhara, must pass through this green- 
set gulf, driven by the current of air which blows 
perpetually from the northern steppes to the 
Mediterranean. Nearer the shore there is the 
unceasing bustle of smaller boats of every kind: 
yawls, slender caiques carrying rowers gaudy with 
gold embroidery, electric launches, large barges all 
painted and gilt, and pulled by crews of fishermen 
standing at their oars and spreading long nets 
which catch in everything as they pass. And 
amid this confusion of moving things noisy paddle- 
boats ply from morning till night, carrying red 
fezzes and shrouded women between the various 
landing-places in Europe and in Asia. 

To right and left along the Bosphorus, twelve 
miles and more of houses among gardens and trees 
look out through thousands of windows at the 
turmoil that never ceases on those green or blue 
waters. Open windows, some of them, others the 
closely latticed windows of impenetrable harems. 
Houses of every date and every style. On the 
European side, alas! villas built by delirious 
Levantines may already be seen, with mongrel 
fronts or even Art nouveau, horrible by the side of 
the simple buildings of old Turkey, but still lost 
and inconspicuous in the beauty of the whole scene. 
On the Asiatic side, where hardly any but Turks 
reside, scornful of new devices and only craving 
silence, you may row your boat close to the shore 
without vexation, for it is unspoilt; the charm of 


184 DISENCHANTED XVIII 


the past and of the East broods there still. At 
every bight in the shore, at each little bay that 
opens at the foot of the wooded hills, only old- 
world things are to be seen; tall trees, haunts of 
oriental mystery. There is no path along the 
water’s edge, each house having its own marble 
landing-place in the old way, enclosed and apart, 
where the ladies of the harem are allowed to sit 
lightly veiled to watch the ever dancing wavelets 
at their feet, and the narrow caiques that go by, 
curved up at prow and stern in a crescent shape. 
Here and there a shady creek, exquisitely calm, is 
full of fishing barks with long cross-yards. Very 
holy cemeteries, where the gilt tombstones seem 
to have come as close as possible to the edge to 
look out too at all the passing ships, and follow the 
movements of the rowers. The mosques stand 
under venerable plane-trees many centuries old, 
and there are village squares where nets are drying, 
hung to the overarching branches, and where 
turbaned dreamers sit round a marble fountain of 
unchanging whiteness with gilt inscriptions and 
arabesques. 

Going down towards Stamboul from Therapia 
and the opening into the Black Sea, the legendary 
and fairy-like scene gradually increases in splen- 
dour till we reach the crowning apotheosis at the 
moment when the sea of Marmora opens out before 
us: then, on the left, we see Scutari in Asia, and on 
the right, above the marble quays and the Sultan’s 
palaces, Stamboul towers up with its mass of shafts 
and cupolas. 

This was the scenery of change and transforma- 


XVIII DISENCHANTED 185 


tions in which André Lhéry was to live till the 
autumn, awaiting his three friends, the little black 
shades, who had said to him, ‘We, too, shall be 
by the Bosphorus during the summer,’ but who 
now for many days had given no sign of life. And 
how could he find out now what had become of 
them, not having any password to admit him to 
their old palace buried in the forests of Macedonia ? 


XIX 
DJENAN TO ANDRE 


Bounar Basui, near SALONICA, 
Fune 20, 1904 (Frankish era). 


“Your friend has thought of you, but for weeks 
she has been too well guarded to write to you. 

“To-day she will give you her grey little history 
—the history of her married life; endure it, you 
who listened with so much kindness to those of 
Zeyneb and Melek at Stamboul, you remember, 
in my good old nurse’s house. 

“The stranger whom my father gave me for a 
husband, André, was neither brutal nor unhealthy; 
on the contrary, a good-looking officer, fair, well- 
mannered, and gentle, whom I might have loved. 
Though at first I execrated him as being the 
master forced upon me, I feel no hatred of him 
now. But I could not look upon love as he saw 
it: love that was nothing but desire, and remained 
indifferent to the possession of my heart. 

‘Among us Moslems, as you know, the men 
and women in one house live apart. This, it is 
true, is less universal than it was, and I know 
some fortunate wives who really live with their 
husbands. But this is not the case in the old 

186 


X1X DISENCHANTED 187 


families which, like ours, adhere to the old rules; 
there, the harem where we must remain and the 
selamlik where our lords and masters live are 
quite distinct and apart. I, then, lived in our 
fine, princely harem with my mother-in-law, two 
sisters-in-law, and a young cousin of Hamdi’s 
named Durdaneh; she is pretty, with a skin as 
fair as alabaster, Gas dyed brightly with henna, 
sea-green eyes, their glance almost phosphorescent, 
but you could never meet her gaze. 

“Hamdi was an only son, and his wife was much 
petted. I had to myself a whole floor of the vast 
old mansion; for my own sole use I had four 
luxurious rooms in the ancient Turkish style, 
where I was bored to death; my bedroom furni- 
ture had come from Paris, with that of a certain 
Louis XVI. drawing-room and of my boudoir, to 
which I had been allowed to bring my books. I 
remember that, as I arranged them in the white 
enamelled bookcases, I was so miserable to think 
that now, when my life as a woman was about to 
begin, it must also end; that it had already given 
me all I could expect of it. This, then, was 
marriage; petting and kissing which never ap- 
pealed to my soul; long hours of solitude, of im- 
prisonment without interest or object, and then 
those other hours when I was to be a mere doll — or 
even lower than that. 

‘I tried to make my boudoir pleasant and 
tempt Hamdi to spend his leisure there. I read 
the papers, I talked to him of matters concern- 
ing the palace and the army; I tried to discover 
what interested him, to learn to discuss it. No, 


188 DISENCHANTED XIX 


this only upset his inherited ideas, as I could see. 
“All these things,” said he, “are for men to talk 
about in the selamlik.”” He only asked me to be 
pretty and lover-like. He asked this so often 
that he asked it too often. 

‘A woman who could no doubt be lover-like 
was Durdaneh. She was praised in the family for 
her grace — the grace of a young panther, lithe in 
all its movements. She would dance of an evening 
and play the lute; she spoke little but was always 
smiling, with a smile at once inviting and cruel, 
showing her small sharp teeth. 

‘She often came to my room, to keep me com- 
pany as she said. But the scorn she poured 
on my books, my piano, my note-books, and my 
letters! She always dragged me off, away from 
them all, into one of the Turkish drawing-rooms, 
where she stretched herself on a divan and smoked 
cigarettes, playing eternally with a mirror. To 
her, I thought, who was still young and had been 
married, I might confide my woes. But she 
only opened wide eyes and burst out laughing. 
“What have you to complain of? You are 
young, pretty, and you have a husband whom you 
soon will love!’’ 

*“No,” said I, “he does not belong to me since 
I know nothing of his mind.” ‘‘What matters his 
mind? You have him, and you have him all to 
yourself!” She emphasised the last words with an 
evil look. 

‘It was a great disappointment to Hamdi’s 
mother that at the end of a year of married life I 
had no child. Certainly, said she, a spell must 


XIX DISENCHANTED 189 


have been cast upon me. I refused to be dragged 
about to waters and to mosques, and to consult 
dervishes who were famed for averting such malef- 
cent charms. A child! no, I did not wish for one. 
If a little girl had been born to us, how should 
I have brought her up? As an Oriental, like 
Durdaneh, with no object in life but to sing and 
be made love to? Or as we have been — Zeyneb, 
Melek, and I, and so condemn her to cruel misery ? 

‘For you see, André, I know that our suffer- 
ings are inevitable, that we are the ladder, we and 
no doubt our immediate successors, by which the 
~ Moslem women of ‘Turkey may rise and emancipate 
themselves. But a little creature of my own blood 
whom I had nursed in my arms —I should not 
have the courage to dedicate her to such a sacrifice. 

“Hamdi at that time was fully bent on asking 
for an appointment abroad in some foreign Em- 
bassy. “I will take you with me,” he promised, 
“and there you can live the life of Western women, 
like the wife of our Ambassador at Vienna, or the 
Princess Emineh in Sweden.”” And I fancied that 
there, in a smaller house, our existence would neces- 
sarily become more domestic. And I also thought 
that in a foreign country he would be glad, perhaps 
proud, of having a wife who was an educated 
woman and well informed on all subjects. 

“How I worked to keep myself up to date in 
my information. [I read all the important French 
reviews, all the leading newspapers, new novels, 
and plays. It was at that time, André, that I came 
to know you so thoroughly. As a girl I had read 
Medjeb, and some of your books on our Eastern 


190 DISENCHANTED XIX 


lands. I read them again at that time, and under- 
stood more fully why we, the Moslem women, owe 
you such deep gratitude, and why we delight in 
you above so many others. It is because your 
comprehension of Islam constitutes a real relation- 
ship of your soul with ours. Islam, our Faith, 
maligned, misrepresented, to which we are, never- 
theless, so faithfully attached; for our grievances 
are no fault of our religion. It was not our 
Prophet who condemned us to the martyrdom we 
endure. The veil which he allowed us was to 
protect us, not to be a symbol of slavery. Never, 
never did he intend that we should be mere dolls 
for our owners’ pleasure. The pious Imam who 
instructed us in our holy book told us so plainly. 
Proclaim this yourself, André; say it for the 
honour of the Koran, and to avenge those who 
are suffering. Say it, finally, for the sake of the 
affection we bear you. 

‘After your books about the East I wanted all 
the others. On every page I dropped atear. Do 
very popular authors, I wonder, ever think as they 
write of the infinite variety of the minds into which 
their ideas will fall with a rush? On Western 
women, who see the world and live in it, the im- 
pressions made by a writer no doubt sink in less 
deeply. But for us who live cloistered, you hold 
the mirror which reflects the world we can never 
know; we see it through your eyes. We feel, we 
live, only through you; can you not understand 
that an author we love becomes part of ourselves ? 
I have followed you all over the world. I have 
scrap-books full of cuttings from papers speaking 


RIK DISENCHANTED IgI 


of you. I have heard evil spoken of you which I 
have not believed. Long before I met you I had 
an exact presentiment of the man you must be. 
When at last I saw you I had already long known 

ou. When you gave me likenesses of you 
— why, André, I had them all reposing in a 
secret drawer in a satin pocket! And after such 
an avowal can you ask to see me again? No, 
such things can be said only to a friend whom one 
can never see again. 

“Dear me, how far I have wandered from the 
little history of my married life. I had got as far, 
I think, as the winter after the great festival of my 
wedding. It was a long winter that year, and 
Stamboul was for two months under snow. I had 
grown pale, and languished. Hamdi’s mother, 
Emireh Hanum, well guessed that I was not 
happy. She was worried, it would seem, by seeing 
me so colourless, for one day two doctors were 
sent for, and by their advice I was sent off to spend 
two months in the Islands,’ whither Zeyneb and 
Melek had gone already. 

“Do you know our islands, and how sweet the 
spring is there? You breathe in a love of life, a 
love of love. In that pure air, under the odorous 
pines, I recovered my vitality. Painful memories, 
all the false notes of my life as a wife, were merged 
in tender homesickness. I thought it was crazy 
to have been so exacting, so complicated, with 
regard to my husband. The climate and the 
April sun had altered me. On moonlight nights, 


1 fies des Princes in the sea of Marmora, known in Constantinople as ‘ the 
Islands.’ 


192 DISENCHANTED XIX 


in the lovely garden of our villa, I often walked 
alone, without a wish, without a thought but that 
of having my Hamdi at my side, and with his arm 
round my waist, to be only and wholly loving. 
I bitterly regretted the kisses I could not return, 
and pined for the fondness which had wearied me. 

‘Before the date fixed, without announcing my 
return, and accompanied only by my slaves, I went 
back to Stamboul. 

“The boat in which I crossed was detained by 
various accidents, and we did not arrive till night- 
fall. Moslem women, as you know, are not per- 
mitted to be out of doors after sunset. It must 
have been nine o’clock when I noiselessly went 
into the house. At that hour Hamdi, of course, 
would be in the selamlik as usual with his father 
and their friends; my mother-in-law, no doubt, in 
her room, meditating on the Koran; and my cousin 
having her horoscope read by some slave practised 
in the lore of coffee grounds. 

‘So I went straight up to my rooms, and on 
going in all I saw was Durdaneh in my husband’s 
arms. 

“You, André, will think such an adventure 
commonplace enough, an everyday affair in the 
West; and in fact I have mentioned it only by 
reason of the resulting sequel. 

‘But I am tired, my friend, whom I may never 
see again, and the sequel must follow to-morrow. 

‘DJENAN.’ 


XX 


However, the whole month of July slipped away 
and André Lhéry did not receive the promised 
sequel, nor any other tidings of the three black 
spectres. 

Like all the dwellers on the Bosphorus in the 
summer, he lived a great deal on the water, to and 
fro day after day between Europe and Asia. Being 
at heart as oriental as any Turk, he had his own 
caique, and his rowers wore the traditional costume 
— Broussa gauze shirts with wide sleeves, and 
sleeveless jackets of velvet embroidered with gold. 
The caique was white, long, narrow, as sharp as a 
dart, and the velvet of his liveries was red. 

One morning he was being rowed in this boat 
under the Asiatic shore, gazing with a vacant eye 
on the old houses standing on the very brink, the 
barred windows of the harems, the hanging verdure 
above the gates of their mysterious gardens, when 
he saw a light boat coming to meet him, rowed by 
three women wrapped in white silk; a eunuch, 
in a severely buttoned frock-coat, sat in the stern, 
and the three rowers pulled with all their might, 
as if in a race. They passed very near him, and 
turned their heads towards him. He observed 
that they had fine hands, but their muslin veils 

oO 193 


194 DISENCHANTED XX 


were down over their faces, and he could see 
nothing. 

Still he had no doubt that he had met his three 
little black spectres, who, with the coming of 
summer, had turned white. On the following day 
they wrote: 


August 3, 1904. 

“Your friends have been back for two days to 
settle on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. And 
yesterday morning they got into their boat, rowing 
themselves, as is their custom, to go to Pacha 
Bagtcheh, where the hedges are full of blackberries 
and the grass full of blue cornflowers. 

“We were rowing. Instead of a tcharchaf and 
a black veil, we each wore a light silk yeldirmeh 
and a muslin scarf over our heads. Weare allowed 
this on the Bosphorus, in the country. It was 
fine, it was young; the weather meant love and 
the springtide of life. The air was cool and light, 
and the oars seemed but a featherweight in our 
hands. Instead of quietly enjoying the lovely 
morning, some folly possessed us to make us row 
fast, and our boat flew over the water as if we 
were hurrying to overtake happiness or death. 

‘But what we caught up in our haste was 
neither death nor happiness, but just our Friend, 
lording it like a Pasha, in a fine caique with red 
and gold rowers. And I stared straight into your 
eyes, which looked at mine without seeing them. 

‘Since our return here we are feeling a little 
tipsy, like prisoners let out of a dark cell to miti- 
gated confinement; if you could imagine what it 


XX DISENCHANTED 195 


was there — where we have come from — in spite 
of the splendour of the roses! Can any one who, 
like you, has lived in the West, feverish, free, 
conceive of the horror of our dead-alive lot, of 
our horizon where one thing alone looms clear: 
to be borne away to sleep under the shade of a 
cypress in the cemetery of Eyoub after an Imam 
has said all the necessary prayers. DJENAN.’ 


“We live like those precious specimens of glass, 
you know, which are kept packed in cases full of 
bran. It is supposed that we are thus preserved 
from every possible jar, but we feel them all the 
same, and then the vital fracture, with the two 
edges in perpetual friction, gives us a dull, deep, 
dreadful pain. ZEYNEB.’ 


‘I am the only person of sense of the three, 
Friend André, that you must long ago have per- 
ceived. ‘The other two — quite between ourselves, 
you understand — are a little cracked, especially 
Djenan, who is willing enough to go on writing 
to you, but never to see you. Happily I am at 
hand to arrange matters. Reply to the old ad- 
dress: Madame Zaideh, you remember? By the 
day after to-morrow we shall have a trustworthy 
friend at hand who is going into town, and will 
call at the post-office. MELEK.’ 


XXI 


Anpré replied at once. To Djenan he said: 
“Never see you again ? — or rather never hear your 
voice again, for I have never seen you? — and 
merely because you have made me a gentle declara- 
tion of intellectual regard! It is absurd! I have 
received many others, believe me, and it does not 
excite me at all.’ He tried to take the whole 
matter lightly and confine himself to the tone of 
an old friend, much her senior and rather paternal. 
In his heart he was uneasy at the vehement resolu- 
tions this proud, perverse little spirit was capable 
of forming; he distrusted her, and he felt too that 
she was already very dear to him, and that to see 
her no more would darken his whole summer. 

In his answer he asked for the promised re- 
mainder of her story, and to conclude, for the 
relief of his conscience, told them how by chance 
he had identified the three. 

The answer came next day but one. 


‘That you should have identified us is a mis- 
fortune. Do your friends, whose faces you can 
never know, still interest you now that their little 
mystery is worn out, riddled with holes ? 

‘The rest of my story? that is simple enough; 
you shall have it. 

196 


XXI DISENCHANTED 197 


‘As to our meeting again, that, André, is less 
simple. Let me think it over. DJENAN.”’ 


“Well, I, for my part, am to be thoroughly 
identified, for I will tell you where we live. As 
you go down the Bosphorus on the Asiatic shore, 
in the second inlet beyond Tchiboukli there is a 
mosque; next to the mosque there is a large yali 
in the oldest style, very much latticed, pompous 
and dismal, with some grim negro in a frock-coat 
always guarding the harem landing-place: there 
we are at home. On the first floor, which pro- 
jects beyond the ground floor over the sea, the six 
windows to the left, screened by formidable lattices, 
are those of our rooms. Since you like the Asiatic 
side, choose it for your excursions, and look up at 
these windows — but do not look too long. Your 
friends, who will recognise your boat from afar, 
will pass the tip of a finger out of a hole as a sign 
of friendship, or perhaps the corner of a handker- 
chief. 

‘I am arranging things with Djenan, and you 
may count on an interview in Stamboul sometime 
next week. MELEK..’ 


No urging was needed to lead him to pass that 
way. The following day, as it happened, was a 
Friday, the day when the Sweet Waters of Asia were 
always a resort of fashion, and he never failed to 
join the throng; and Djenan’s ancient residence, 
easy no doubt to recognise, was on the way thither. 
Stretched in his caique, he passed as close as pru- 
dence would allow. The yali, built entirely of 


198 DISENCHANTED XXI 


wood in the old Turkish fashion, a little the worse 
for the hand of time, and painted a dark ochre, 
had a grand air, but how gloomy and secret! At 
the base it was almost washed by the Bosphorus, 
and his captive friends’ windows overhung the 
sea water, rippled by the eternal current. Behind 
it were gardens with high walls, sloping up the 
hill till they mingled with the adjoining wood. 

Under the house was one of the open tunnels 
which were in common use in olden days to shelter 
the owner’s boats, and André, as he went near, 
saw a handsome caique emerge, manned for an 
excursion, the rowers in blue velvet jackets em- 
broidered with gold, and a long hanging of the 
same velvet, also embroidered, which trailed in 
the water. Were his little friends also going to 
the Sweet Waters? It looked like it. 

As he passed he glanced up at the windows 
described to him; slender fingers wearing many 
rings peeped through and the corner of a lace 
handkerchief. From the mere way in which the 
fingers waggled and the handkerchief was flour- 
ished, André could recognise them as those of 
Melek. 

At Constantinople there are the Sweet Waters 
of Europe, a little stream among trees and mead- 
ows, to which visitors come in crowds on Fridays in 
spring. And there are the Sweet Waters of Asia, 
an even tinier river, almost a brook, which comes 
down from the Asiatic hills to.fall into the Bos- 
phorus; and this is the place of meeting on 
Fridays in summer. 

At the hour when André arrived there that 


XXI DISENCHANTED 199 


afternoon numbers of caiques were being rowed 
in from both shores, some occupied by veiled ladies, 
others by men wearing the red fez. At the foot 
of a fantastic castle of medizval Saracen work, 
bristling with turrets and battlements, and near a 
magnificent kiosque with marble landing-steps, be- 
longing to His Majesty the Sultan, ends this tiny 
stream of water which week after week attracts so 
many mysterious fair ones. 

Before turning up it, between banks of reeds 
and ferns, André looked round to see whether 
they were really coming, and he fancied that he 
recognised, far behind him, their three forms in 
black tcharchafs, and the blue and the gold livery 
of their boatmen. 

The place was already crowded when he reached 
it: a crowd on the water in boats of every form 
with liveries of every hue; a crowd on land, on 
the lawns, almost too dainty and pretty, arranged 
in an amphitheatre, as though on purpose for 
groups who wish to sit and watch the boats go 
past. Here and there were large trees beneath 
which coffee-stalls were set up, and where indolent 
smokers had spread mats on the grass to recline, - 
with their narghileh, in oriental ease. And on 
both sides rose the wooded hills, unkempt and 
rather wild, enclosing it all between their exqui- 
sitely green slopes. “They were chiefly women who 
sat on the natural steps on each of the pretty river 
banks, and nothing is more pleasingly effective 
than a crowd of Turkish women in the country, 
not wearing dark tcharchafs as in the city, but 
dressed in long gowns all of one colour, pink, 


200 DISENCHANTED XxI 


blue, brown, red, and each having her head 
wrapped in a veil of white muslin. 

This very crowd is the strange and amusing 
part of the excursion, on water so calm, so enclosed 
and shrouded with verdure, with so many pairs of 
bright eyes watchful on every side through slits 
in the veils. Often this is the end of the journey; 
the oars clash and get entangled, the rowers shout, 
the caiques bump; then they pull up all quite 
close together, with plenty of time for gazing. 
Ladies, featureless, will sit for an hour close under 
the bank, their boat almost buried in the reeds 
and water plants, with long eye-glasses in their 
hands inspecting the passers-by. Others are bold 
enough to plunge into the mél/ée, still remaining 
motionless and enigmatical behind their veils, while 
their boatmen, blazing with gold, rage and rave. 
And by proceeding no more than a few yards up 
the pretty little stream, you find yourself in a 
thick tangle of boughs, between trees that bend 
over the water; the boat grates on the white 
stones at the bottom, and back you must go. 
Then you turn with great difficulty, for a caique 
is very long, and go down-stream — but only to 
come up again and then back once more, as if you 
were pacing to and fro in an alley. 

When his caique had been turned in the green 
darkness, where the stream ceases to be navigable, 
André reflected: ‘I shall certainly meet my 
friends, who must have reached the Sweet Waters 
a few minutes later than I.’ So he looked no 
more at the women seated in groups on the grass, 
or the pairs of black, or grey, or blue eyes sparkling 


XXI DISENCHANTED 201 


from under the white shrouds; he looked out 
only at what met him coming up the stream. A 
procession still enchanting in its whole effect, 
though now no longer such as it was of old, and 
though one often has to look the other way to avoid 
seeing the pretentious American yawls of the 
younger Turks, and the vulgar hired barges in 
which the Levantine ladies display scarecrow hats. 
However, caiques are still in the majority, and on 
this day there were some splendid boats out with 
handsome oarsmen in jackets loaded with gold; in 
them, half-reclining, were ladies in more or less 
transparent tcharchafs, and a few very elegant 
women wearing the yashmak as if they were going 
to Court, showing their foreheads and deeply 
shadowed eyes. How was it indeed that they did 
not wearthe yashmak, these little friends, who were, 
nevertheless, flowers of elegance, instead of appear- 
ing here all black, as he had seen them just now? 
No doubt, in consequence of Djenan’s obstinate 
determination to remain inscrutable to him. 

At last they came into view round a bend in 
the river. ‘These were certainly the three; elegant 
little spectres, on a blue velvet rug which caught 
the water weeds in its gold fringes that hung over 
the stern. Three are rather many in a caique; 
two were royally enthroned at the back on the 
velvet seat of the same colour as the rowers’ 
jackets — the two eldest, no doubt — and the third, 
the child of the party, sat crouching at their feet. 
They passed close enough to touch him. He at 
once recognised at so short a distance Melek’s 
smiling eyes under the black gauze which to-day 


202 DISENCHANTED XXI 


was but single — the eyes he had caught sight of 
one day on the stairs; and he hastily looked up 
at the two seated in the best places. One of these 
two had a semi-transparent veil, which enabled him 
almost to distinguish the youthful features, ex- 
quisitely regular and finely cut, but not allowing 
the eyes to be clearly seen. He had no doubt: 
this was Zeyneb, consenting at last to be less com- 
pletely hidden, and the third, as utterly invisible - 
as ever, was Djenan. 

It need not be said that no sign, no greeting, 
was given on either side. Melek alone, the least 
strictly veiled, smiled, but so faintly that if he 
had not been so close to her he would not have 
detected it. 

They crossed twice more, and then it was time 
to go home. The sun soon shone only on the 
tops of the hills and the woods, the air was full of 
the delicious coolness that rose from the water at 
the close of day. By degrees the little river and 
its banks were deserted, to remain so till the 
following Friday; the caiques were scattered all 
over the Bosphorus, bearing home the fair excur- 
sionists, who were bound to be at home before sun- 
set and dolefully incarcerated in the harems all 
along the shore. André allowed his friends to leave 
long before him, for fear of being suspected of 
following them; then he returned, keeping under 
the Asiatic shore, and very slowly, to let his oars- 
men rest, and to see the moon rise. 


XXII 
DJENAN TO ANDRE 


August 17, 1904 (Frankish calendar). 


“Truty, André, do you want to have the end of 
my story? But it was a wretched adventure of 
which I told you the beginning. 

“What torment is dying love! If only it could 
die suddenly, all at once; but it struggles, it 
fights for life, and this is the cruel agony. 

“My little bag fell out of my hands, and at the 
sound of a scent-bottle that broke in the fall, 
Durdaneh turned her head. She was not dis- 
turbed; her sea-green eyes opened wide and she 
greeted me with her pretty panther-like smile. 
We looked at each other, she and I, without a 
word. Hamdi so far had seen nothing. She had 
one arm round his neck, and she gently made him 
look round: “Djenan,” said she in a tone of 
indifference. 

“What he did I do not know, for I fled, to see 
no more. Instinctively I took refuge in his 
mother’s room. She was reading her Koran, and 
scolded me at first for breaking in on her medita- 
tions; then she started up in horror to go to 

203 


204 DISENCHANTED XXII 


them, leaving me alone. When she came back, 
how long after I do not know, “Go back to your 
rooms,” she said with gentle kindness. “Go, my 
poor child, they are gone.” 

“Alone in my boudoir with the doors shut, I 
threw myself on a couch, and cried till I slept 
from sheer exhaustion. But oh! the awakening 
at dawn! To find that in my mind, to begin to 
think once more, to see that I must decide on 
some course of action. I would have hated them 
if I could, but there was no feeling left in me but 
anguish — anguish and love. 

“It was very early, the first break of day. I 
heard steps outside my door and my mother-in- 
law came in; I saw at once that her eyes had 
been weeping. 

““Durdaneh is gone,” she said. “I have sent 
her far away to a relation of ours.” Then sitting 
down beside me, she went on to say that such 
things happen every day in life; that a man’s 
whims are as uncertain as those of the wind; 
that I must go to my room and dress myself to 
look lovely and smile on Hamdi that evening 
when he should come home from the Palace; he 
was very miserable, it would seem, and would not 
come near me till I was comforted. In the course 
of the afternoon I received some silk blouses, lace, 
fans, and jewels. 

“Then I begged that I might only be left to 
myself in my room. I wanted to see clearly to 
the bottom of my own soul. Remember that I 
had come home to the harem the day before, in all 
the thrilling excitement of a new emotion; I had 


XXII ~ DISENCHANTED 205 


brought with me the springtime of the Islands, 
its fragrance and its song, kisses I had plucked in 
that air, all the palpitation of an awakening to 
love. 

‘In the evening Hamdi joined me, very quiet 
and rather pale. I myself was no less calm, and | 
simply asked him to tell me the truth: Did he 
still love me, yes or no? I would go home to my 
grandmother and leave him free. He smiled and 
took me in his arms. “What a child you are,” 
said he; “why, how could I cease to love you?” 
And he covered me with kisses, heaping caresses 
on me. 

‘I meanwhile tried to ask him how he could 
love another if he still loved me. Ah, André, 
then | learnt the measure of man — of our men at 
any rate. This one had not even the courage 
of his love. ‘“‘Durdaneh! That woman!” No, 
he did not love her. It was a mere fancy; her 
sea-green eyes, her supple form when she danced 
in the evening. And she had said that she had 
arts and spells to bewitch men, so he had wished 
to put her to the proof. And after all, what could 
it matter to me? But for my unannounced 
return I should never have known anything 
about it. 

‘Oh the pity and disgust of my soul as I lis- 
tened! for her, for him, and for myself, who 
longed to forgive. However, I suffered less 
violently now that I was resigned. So it was 
merely her supple form and her sea-green eyes 
that Hamdi had loved her for. Well, I was 
prettier than she, I well knew; I, too, had sea- 


206 DISENCHANTED XXII 


green eyes, darker and less common than hers, 
and if all he asked was that I should be lovely and 
loving I was certainly both just now. 

“The campaign of reconquest began. It was 
not a long business; the memory of Durdaneh 
soon weighed no more on her lover’s heart. But 
never in my life have I known such distressful 
days. I felt all that was lofty and pure in me 
disappear, drop like roses fading in front of a fire. 
I had no thought but one: to please him, to 
make him forget the love of another in my greater 
love. 

‘But soon I perceived with horror that as my 
contempt for myself grew, so by degrees did my 
hatred of the man for whom I was degrading 
myself; for I had become to him neither more 
nor less than a doll for his pleasure. I thought of 
nothing but beautifying myself, to be differently 
charming every day. Cases arrived from Paris 
full of evening dresses, elegant wrappers, per- 
fumes, cosmetics; all the tricks of Western vanity 
added to those of our Eastern beauties were my 
only object in life. I never went into my boudoir, 
feeling the reproach of my neglected books; the 
air was full of such different ideas, alas! from 
those that occupied me now. 

‘Djenan the lover might do her utmost, she 
mourned for the Djenan of the past who had 
striven to possess a soul. And how can I find 
words for the agony when I felt at last only too 
clearly that my blandishments were false, my 
kisses a lie, that love was dead in me. 

“But he now loved me with a passion which 
became a terror to me. What could I do to 


-_ 


XXII DISENCHANTED 207 


escape from him, to put an end to this degrada- 
tion? I saw no way out of it but death, and I 
had it always by me, ready prepared and close at 
hand on the dressing-table at which I now so 
constantly sat; a swift and gentle death within 
reach of my hand, in a silver bottle exactly like 
my scent-bottles. 

‘I had come to this, when one morning, on 
going into my mother-in-law’s drawing-room, I 
found two visitors just putting on their tcharchafs 
to leave: Durdaneh and the aunt who had taken 
her in charge. She, that Durdaneh, was smiling 
as usual, but with a little air of triumph, while the 
two old ladies seemed quite upset. I, for my 
part, on the contrary, was perfectly calm. I 
observed that her dress of fawn-coloured cloth 
was loosely made, and that she seemed to have 
grown large and heavy; she slowly fixed her 
tcharchaf and veil, said good- -bye and went. 
“What did she come here for?” ' asked simply 
when we were alone. Emireh Hanum made me sit 
down by her, holding my hands and hesitating to 
reply; I saw the tears trickle down her wrinkles. 
Durdaneh was going to have a child and my hus- 
band must marry her. A woman of their family 
could not be a mother without being a wife, and 
besides, Hamdi’s child had a right to a place in 
the house. 

‘She told me all this weeping the while, and 
had thrown her arms round me. But how calmly 
I heard her! This meant deliverance, brought to 
me when I thought myself lost. I at once replied 
that I quite understood all this, and Hamdi was 


208 DISENCHANTED XXII 


free; that I was ready to be divorced then and 
there, and owed no one the smallest grudge. 

*“ Divorced!” cried she, with a burst of tears. 
“Divorced! You wish to be divorced? But my 
son adores you. We all of us love you. You 
are the joy of our eyes!”” Poor woman, she was 
the only person I regretted when I left that house. 
And then, to persuade me, she began to tell me 
of the wives of her young days who could make 
themselves happy in the like case. She herself, 
had she not shared the Pasha’s love with other 
women? As soon as her beauty had begun to go 
off, had she not seen two, three younger wives, one 
after another, in his harem? She called them her 
sisters; no one of them had ever failed in respect 
for her, and it was always to her that the Pasha 
had recourse if he had any private matter to tell 
or information to ask, or when he felt ill. Had 
she suffered from all this? Hardly —for she 
could only remember one sorrow in her life, and 
that was when little Saida, the youngest of her 
rivals, died leaving her baby toher. Yes, Hamdi’s 
youngest brother Ferid was not her own son but 
poor Saida’s; and this was the first time I heard 
of it. 

“Durdaneh was to return to the harem on the 
morrow. What could the woman matter to me 
at this juncture of affairs; and after all Hamdi no 
longer cared for her, and loved only me. But 
still she was a pretext I must seize, this oppor- 
tunity must not on any account be missed. To cut 
the matter short, in my horror of scenes, and still 
more my fear of Hamdi who would be in a frenzy, 


XXII DISENCHANTED 209 


I then and there temporised. On my knees before 
his weeping mother, I only begged and obtained 
leave to spend two months in seclusion at Kassim 
Pacha in my girlhood’s home; I needed that, I 
said, to resign myself; then I could come back. 

‘And I was gone before Hamdi had come in 
from Yildiz. 

‘It was just then, André, that you came to 
Constantinople. At the end of the two months 
my husband, of course, demanded his wife. I sent 
word to him that living I would never again be 
his; the little silver phial I kept always about me, 
and it was a fearful struggle till the day when His 
Majesty the Sultan vouchsafed to sign the Iradeh 
which set me free. 

‘Dare I confess to you that for the first few 
weeks I was still very unhappy? Against my 
expectation the image of that man, and the kisses 
I had both loved and hated too vehemently, 
haunted me for a long time. 

“Now all is calm within me. I forgive him 
for having brought me down almost to the level 
of a courtesan; I no longer long for him nor 
hate him. It is all over: I still feel some shame 
at having believed I had known love because a 
handsome lad held me in his arms. But I have 
recovered my dignity, I have found my soul 
again and resumed my soaring flight. 

“Now answer this letter, André, that I may 
know whether you understand me, or whether, 
like so many others, you regard me as a poor 
unbalanced mind in quest of the impossible. 

‘ DJENAN.’ 
P 


XXITI 


Anpré wrote to Djenan that Hamdi struck him 
as very like all men, as much of the West as of 
the East; but that she was the really exceptional 
being, the choicer soul. And then he pointed out 
to her — which was certainly not original — that 
nothing flies so fast as time; the two years of his 
residence at Constantinople were all slipping past, 
and would never come again; hence they ought 
to take every opportunity of exchanging their 
thoughts, which must so soon perish, like those of 
every living creature, in the abyss of death. 

He received notice of an assignation for the 
following Thursday at Stamboul, in the old house 
at the end of the silent alley beyond Sultan 
Selim. 

On that day he went down the Bosphorus in 
the morning on a steamboat, and found Stamboul 
basking in summer, almost like Arabia, so hot and 
still was the air, and so white the mosques in the 
burning August sunshine. How could any one 
imagine that a city like this to-day could linger 
through such long winters, under such a persistent 
shroud of snow? ‘The streets were more deserted 
than ever, because so many people had migrated 
to the Bosphorus, or the islands in the sea of 

210 


XXII DISENCHANTED 211 


Marmora, and oriental smells were aggravated in 
the over-heated atmosphere. 

To while away the time he went to the square 
of Sultan Fatih, to sit in the old place under the 
shade of the trees, facing the mosque. Some 
Imams there, who had not seen him for so many 
days, welcomed him warmly, and then sank into 
dreaming again. And the caféji, regarding him 
as a constant customer, brought with his nar- 
ghileh the little household cat Tekir, which had 
often been his pet in the spring, and which settled 
down at once close beside him, her head on his 
knee to be rubbed. The walls of the mosque 
opposite were blindingly white. Some children 
were dipping water out of an old fountain, and 
they poured it on the pavement all round the 
smokers, but it was so hot in spite of this that the 
finches and blackbirds in the cages were mute and 
sleepy, and yellow leaves were falling already, 
prophesying the early decline of this glorious 
summer. 

At Sultan Selim, which he reached at the 
crushing hour of two o’clock, the alley was so 
empty and resonant as to be quite alarming. 
Within the outer door he found Melek on guard, 
and she smiled at him like a faithful little comrade, 
glad to see him again at last. Her veil was thin 
and her face was as visible as that of an European 
in a mourning veil. He found Zeyneb upstairs 
in the same light shroud, and for the first time he 
saw the gleam of her brown eyes, and met their 
sweet, grave young gaze. But, as he had ex- 
pected, Djenan persisted in remaining no more 


212 DISENCHANTED XX 


than a slim, black vision, absolutely without 
features. 

The question she asked him in a knowing 
tone, as soon as they were seated on the shabby, 
faded divan, was: 

“Well, and how is your friend, Jean Renaud ?’ 

‘Perfectly well, thank you; but where did you 
learn his name ?’ 

‘Everything is known in the harems. For 
instance, I can tell you that you dined last night 
with Madame de Saint-Enogat, and sat next to a 
lady in a pink gown; that afterwards you and she 
went out together and sat on a bench in the 
garden, and that she smoked one of your cigar- 
ettes in the moonlight. And so on, and so on. 
Everything you do, everything that happens to 
you, comes to our knowledge. Then you can 
assure me that Monsieur Jean Renaud is perfectly 
well ?’ 

“Why, yes; when I tell you 

“Then, Melek, you have wasted your pains — 
it will not work.’ 

He then learnt that Melek had for some days 
devoted herself to prayer and a magic charm, to 
obtain Jean Renaud’s death, partly in childish fun, 
and yet more in solemn earnest, having persuaded 
herself that he embodied an adverse influence and 
kept André on the defensive with regard to them. 

“There, you see,’ said Djenan laughing. ‘You 
wanted to know oriental women — that is what we 
really are. Scratch the veneer and we are little 
barbarians.’ 

“You were entirely mistaken about him, at any 





XXIII DISENCHANTED 213 


tate. On the contrary, he is always dreaming of 
you, poor Jean Renaud. * Indeed, but for him we 
should never have known each other. On the 
occasion of our first meeting at Pacha Bagtcheh, 
the day of the high wind, he dragged me there; I 
had refused to go.’ 

‘Good Jean Renaud,’ cried Melek. ‘Well, 
listen then. Bring him to-morrow, Friday, to the 
Sweet Waters in your handsome caique, and I will 
go myself on purpose to smile at him as we pass.’ 

In the gloomy, melancholy harem, where the 
splendour of the day could hardly be guessed 
even, Djenan remained sphinx-like and motion- 
less, even more so than last time. It was evident 
that she felt some fresh shyness and constraint 
from having so fully betrayed herself in her long 
letters; and to see her nervous made André 
nervous too, almost aggressive. 

To-day she tried to make him talk about the 
book. 

“It will be a novel, of course ?’ 

“How should I be able to write anything else? 
But I do not yet see that novel, I must say.’ 

“Will you allow me to tell you what my idea 
is? A novel, certainly, in which you yourself 
will figure.’ 

“Ah, no, never that!’ 

‘Let me explain myself. You will not write 
in the first person: that I know you will never 
do again. But there might be an European in 
the story, staying at Constantinople for a time, a 
singer of the East, who would see with your eyes, 
and feel with your soul.’ 


214 DISENCHANTED XXIII 


‘And no one would recognise me, you may be 
very sure!’ 

‘What could it matter? Let me go on, will 
you? In spite of the thousand inevitable risks, 
he must clandestinely meet one of our Turkish 
sisters, and they must fall in love 

‘And then?’ 

‘And then, he must go away, that is inevitable 
— and that is all.’ 

“How new and original such an intrigue would 
be in a book of mine!’ 

‘I beg your pardon, this might be quite new — 
that their love for each other remained unavowed 
and perfectly pure.’ 

‘Ah! And after he has gone — she : 

‘She ? — why, what would you have her do? 
She dies.’ 

She dies. It was said with such a tone of 
poignant conviction that André felt a shock all 
through him that kept him silent. 

Then Zeyneb began to speak. 

“Tell him, Djenan, the title you had thought 
of. We thought it so pretty: The Blue Sky that 
Kills. —No? You do not seem to like it.’ 

‘It is pretty, certainly,’ said André, ‘but per- 
haps a little — dear me, what shall I say ? — a little 
in the sentimental ballad style.’ 

“Well, well,’ said Djenan, ‘say at once that 
you think it 1830. It is rococo — let us drop it.’ 

“A little in curl-papers,’ said Melek. 

He now discerned that it had been a pang to 
her to be contradicted half ironically in the little 
literary notions which she had formulated unaided, 








XXIII DISENCHANTED 215 


with so much toil, and often with such unerring 
intuition. She suddenly appeared to him as so 
artless and so young — she whom he had thought 
of at first as too much sunk in books. He was 
distressed to think that he might have vexed her 
ever so little, and changed his tone at once to one 
of gentleness, almost of affection. 

‘No, no, my dear little invisible friend; your 
title is not rococo nor ridiculous, nor could any- 
thing be that you might imagine or say. Only, 
let us keep death out of it — do not you think so? 
In the first place, for the sake of a change; so 
many people have died in my books, you know. 
Consider, I shall be taken for a perfect Bluebeard. 
No, no death in this book; on the contrary, if 
possible, sheer youth and life. With this granted, 
I will try to write it in any form you like best, 
and we will work at it together, like two com- 
rades, will we not ?’ 

And they parted greater friends than they had 
been till this day. 


XXIV 
DJENAN TO ANDRE 


September 16, 1904. 


‘I was among the flowers in the garden, and I 
felt so lonely there, and so tired of my loneliness. 
A storm had swept past in the night and wrecked 
the roses. The earth was strewn with them. As 
I walked over these freshly fallen flowers, it was 
like trampling down dreams. 

“It was in that garden that ever since I came 
from Karadjemir I spent all my summers as a 
child and a girl, with your friends Zeyneb and 
Melek. I cannot say that we were unhappy at 
that period of our lives. Everything smiled on 
us. Every one about us enjoyed the negative 
happiness which consists in peace at the passing 
moment and security for the next. We had 
never seen hearts bleed. Our days glided by 
slowly and quietly between our studies and our 
little pleasures, leaving us half asleep in the torpor 
which comes with our always hot summers. It 
had never occurred to us that we were to be 
pitied. Our foreign governesses had been very 
unhappy in their own homes. ‘They found relief 

216 


XXIV DISENCHANTED 217 


among us, and such peace as was like a haven 
after a tempest. And we sometimes spoke to 
them of our vague dreams and ill-defined longings 
to live like European women, to travel and see; 
they replied by praising the quiet and ease in 
which we lived. The quiet, the peace of a Mos- 
lem woman’s life; all our childhood through 
we heard of nothing else. So nothing from out- 
side had taught us to endure. Then suffering 
came upon us from within; restlessness and in- 
satiable craving were born in us. My drama 
really began on my wedding day, when the silver 
threads of my bridal veil still clung to me. 

‘Do you remember, André, our first meeting 
in the flagged path and the blustering wind, and 
could you then have believed that so soon you 
would be to us so dear a friend? I am sure too 
that you are beginning to feel attached to these 
little Turkish women, although they have already 
lost the fascination of mystery. A delightful 
tender feeling has stolen over me since our last 
meeting, since the moment when your eyes and 
your tone of voice changed because you were 
afraid you had hurt me. Then I understood how 
kind you are, and that you would consent to be 
my confidant as well as my friend. It will do me 
so much good to tell you, who will be sure to 
understand, so many weariful things which no one 
has ever heard; circumstances in my fate which 
puzzle me. You, who are a man, and who know, 
will perhaps be able to explain them. 

“I have a photograph of you close to me on my 
writing-table, and it looks at me with its clear 


218 DISENCHANTED XXIV 


gaze. You too, I know, are not far away on 
the other shore; only an arm of the Bosphorus 
parts us, and yet what a distance for ever lies 
between us two, what an abyss of difficulties, with 
the constant uncertainty of ever meeting again. 
In spite of all, I could wish that when you have 
left our country I might not be merely a doubtful 
spectre in your remembrance. I should like to 
live in it as a reality, a poor, sad little reality. 

‘Do you know what the roses I just now trod 
underfoot reminded me of? A similar destruction 
in this same garden two years ago or rather more. 
But it was not the work of a summer tempest; it 
was autumn. October had seared the trees, it 
was cold, and we were to go back to town the 
next day, to Kassim Pacha. Everything was 
packed up and the house dismantled. We went 
out into the garden to take leave of it and gather 
the last flowers. A bitter blast sighed in the 
boughs. Old Irfaneh, one of our slaves, who is 
addicted to sorcery and to reading fortunes in 
coffee-grounds, had declared that this was a good 
day for foretelling our destiny. She brought us 
out some coffee, and we had to drink it; it was 
in a nook at the end of the garden, sheltered by 
the hill, and I can see her now, squatting at our 
feet among the dead leaves, anxious as to what she 
might discover. In Zeyneb’s cup and in Melek’s 
she saw only pleasure and presents, they were still 
so young. But she shook her head as she read 
mine. “‘Ah! love is on the watch,” said she; 
“but love is treacherous. You will not come 
back to the Bosphorus for a long time, and when 


XXIV DISENCHANTED 219 


you return the flower of your happiness will have 
fallen. Poor thing, poor thing! ‘There is nothing 
in your life but love and death.” It was true; I 
did not come back here till this summer, after my 
distressful marriage. Still, is it the flower of 
happiness that is gone, since I never had any 
happiness? No, I think not. But her last words 
never struck me as they did to-day: “There is 
nothing in your life but love and death.” 
‘DJENAN.’ 


XXV 


THEy met frequently during this delightful 
summer end. At least once a week at the Sweet 
Waters of Asia their caiques touched, they giving 
no sign. Zeyneb and Melek, whose features he 
could somewhat distinguish, hardly dared to smile 
under the black gauze. They met, too, in the 
worthy nurse’s house in Stamboul; they were 
more free on the Bosphorus than in their vast . 
winter homes at Kassim Pacha, and found a 
hundred pretexts for going into the town and 
dropping their slaves on the way. Each in- 
terview, to be sure, necessitated a tissue of 
machinations and audacity, which always seemed 
about to break down and turn an innocent 
adventure into a tragedy, but which always, by 
some miracle, turned out happily. And success 
gave them assurance and made them plot more 
perilous enterprises. ‘You might tell the whole 
story here in Constantinople,’ they would amuse 
themselves by saying; ‘no one would believe 
you.’ 

When they were all together in the little house 
chatting like old friends, Zeyneb and Melek would 
now raise their veils and show the whole of their 
faces; only their hair remained hidden under the 

220 


XXV DISENCHANTED D2 


black hood, and in this way they looked like 
little nuns, young and graceful. Dyenan alone 
admitted no compromise; nothing could be 
guessed of her features, perpetually shrouded as 
funereally as on the first day, and he feared to 
remark on it, foreseeing that some positive 
answer might rob him of all hope of ever seeing 
her eyes. 

He now and then ventured, by agreement 
with them, to go to hear them make music in the 
still, perfidious nights on the Bosphorus, breath- 
less, warm, and enticing, but which drench you at 
once in penetrating cold dew. Almost every day 
during the summer the violent draught of air 
from the Black Sea rushes down the strait and 
thrashes it into foam, but never fails to die away 
at sundown, as if the flood-gates of the wind 
were suddenly shut. As soon as dusk falls the 
trees on the banks are motionless, everything 
settles into stillness and dreams; the surface of 
the sea is an unwrinkled mirror reflecting the 
stars, the moon, the myriad lights in the houses 
and palaces; oriental languor comes down with 
the darkness on these extreme edges of Asia and 
Europe facing each other, and the constant moisture 
of the atmosphere wraps all things in softening 
and magnifying haze, those that are near as well 
as those that are far off; the hills, the woods, the 
-mosques, the Greek and Turkish villages, the 
little creeks on the Asiatic side, more silent than 
those on the European shore, and more sunk 
every night in their absolute stillness. 

From Therapia, where André lived, to his 


222 DISENCHANTED XXV 


friends’ yali was about half-an-hour’s crossing in 
a rowing-boat. 

The first time he went in his caique, for it was 
always an enchantment to go about at night in this 
little bark, so low as to be able to touch the water, 
lying at full length on the pale blue and silver 
mirror of the still surface. The European shore, 
as it receded, also assumed a_ semblance of 
mystery and peace; all the lights threw on the 
Bosphorus innumerable little glittering shafts 
that seemed to strike down into the depths below. 
The Eastern music from the little outside cafés, 
the strange flourishes of the singers pursued him, 
carried and harmonised by the deeper tones of the 
sea; even the hideous orchestras of ‘Therapia were 
mellowed by distance and the magic of the night 
till they were pleasing to the ear. And there, 
facing him, was the shore of Asia, towards which 
he was going so luxuriously. Its thickets of dense 
verdure, its hills covered with trees, formed black 
masses, which looked gigantic, towering above 
their reversed reflection; the lights, fewer and less 
garish, came from windows screened by lattices, 
behind which he could imagine the women that 
none might see. 

On that occasion, in his own caique, André did 
not dare stop under the lighted windows, and he 
passed by. His oarsmen, whose embroidered 
jackets shone too brightly in the moonlight, and 
might excite the suspicion of some negro sentinel 
on the bank, were all Turks, and, in spite of 
their personal devotion, quite capable of betraying 
him in their indignation if they had scented the 


XXV DISENCHANTED 223 


smallest understanding between their European 
master and the ladies of that harem. 

So on other evenings he came in the humblest 
of the fishing-boats which go out on the Bos- 
phorus in thousands every night. Thus, under 
the pretence of laying the nets, he could linger for 
a long time; he could hear Zeyneb sing, accom- 
panied by Melek or Djenan; he knew her rich 
young voice, such a lovely voice, and so naturally 
expressive, especially in the lower notes, but in 
which there was now and then the very slightest 
huskiness, making it perhaps all the more at- 
tractive, as marking it for early decay. 

About mid-September they did a most daring 
thing — they climbed a hill all rosy with heath, 
and took a walk in a wood. This they achieved 
without let or hindrance, just above Beicos, the 
point on the Asiatic shore precisely opposite 
Therapia, to which André came every evening 
towards sunset. Impossible to describe the charm 
of Beicos, which became one of their favourite 
meeting-places least disturbed by alarms. Leaving 
Therapia, the pretentious centre of fashionable 
folly, he would here find in contrast the silent 
shade of tall trees, the meditative peace of a past 
age. From a little landing-place of white stone 
you step at once into a Garden of Eden, under 
plane-trees four centuries old, which do not look 
as if they were native to our climate, so much have 
they assumed of the growth of the baobab or the 
Indian banyan. 

This is a perfectly flat meadow, carpeted in 
autumn with fine velvety turf, smoother than that 


224 DISENCHANTED XXV 


of the best-kept garden; a lawn which seems to 
have been created expressly for pacing in moods 
of meditation and sage melancholy; it is hardly 
half a league across, exactly of the right size to 
lie secreted without suggesting imprisonment, 
enclosed on all sides by lonely hills overgrown 
with woods, and the Turks, struck by its peculiar 
charm, give it the name of the ‘Grand Signior’s 
Valley.’ It is impossible to suspect that the 
Bosphorus is so close, with its constant bustle 
which would disturb meditation; the hills hide it 
completely. ‘Ihe wanderer is isolated from every- 
thing; not a sound is to be heard, unless it be, 
towards evening, the pipe of the goatherds col- 
lecting their flocks on the hills behind. The 
majestic plane-trees, whose roots coil over the 
earth like huge snakes, form a sort of sacred wood 
at the entrance to this park, but they stand further 
apart as you go on, and form into avenues, leaving 
open expanses of lawn on which the white-veiled 
women walk slowly up and down before sunset. 
There is a stream, too, through this valley of the 
Grand Signior, a cool rivulet, the home of many 
tortoises ; it is crossed by little plank bridges; on 
its banks, under the shade of a few old trees, the 
sellers of Turkish coffee set up booths for the 
summer months, and there men sit and smoke 
their narghilehs, especially on Fridays, and watch 
the women who promenade to and fro on this 
meadow of long dreams. They walk in groups 
of three, four, to ten, somewhat scattered and a 
little lost, for these lawns are to them a_ very 
vast spread of carpet. Their dresses are all in 


XXV DISENCHANTED 225 


one form and of one colour, often of Damascus 
silk, pink or blue, and patterned with gold; these 
fall in antique folds, and every head is wrapped in 
white muslin; this costume, in this deeply secluded 
place, and the spellbound gravity of their walk, 
remind one, as dusk comes on, of the happy shades 
of pagan creeds walking in the Elysian fields. 

André was a constant visitor to the valley of 
the Grand Signior; he spent almost every day 
there during his residence in Therapia. 

At the appointed hour he landed under the 
baobab-like plane-trees accompanied by Jean 
Renaud, who again was to keep watch, and was 
always amused at playing the part. His Moslem 
servants, impossible in these circumstances, he had 
left on the European shore, bringing with him 
only a faithful Frenchman, who, as usual, had 
brought his master’s fez in a bag. Since his new 
friendship he was in the habit of changing his 
headgear, and the fez had hitherto averted danger; 
he put it on wherever he happened to be — in a 
hired carriage or in a boat, or in some deserted 
side-street. 

He saw the three arrive in a talika and alight, 
and, like three little ladies come out for an 
innocent walk, they crossed the grass, which was 
rosy already here and there with clumps of the 
autumn crocus. Zeyneb and Melek wore the 
thin yeldirmeh, which is admissible in the country, 
and the white gauze veil which leaves the eyes 
visible. Only Djenan had put on the black 
tcharchaf of the town, to remain still austerely 
invisible. 

Q 


226 DISENCHANTED XXV 


When they turned into a certain path they had 
agreed upon, a path winding uphill, he joined 
them and introduced Jean Renaud, whose hand 
they had wished to grasp with their finger-tips as 
some amends for having plotted his death, and 
who was sent forward as scout. In the exquisite 
afternoon they lightly climbed the slope amid 
chestnut trees and oaks; the grass was gay with 
scabious. Presently they reached the heath, and 
under the trees all was pink; and then, higher 
still, the distance came into view. On this, the 
Asiatic side, there were forests without end; as 
far as the eye could see, on hills and mountains 
lay the grand wild green covert which still shelters 
bears and brigands. 

The Black Sea, suddenly extended to an in- 
finite distance, lay at their feet, of a greyer and 
colder blue than the sea of Marmora, which is so 
near it; it was to-day insinuatingly calm and 
pensive under the sun of this late summer day, as 
though it were already looking forward to its 
perpetual rage and wintry uproar when the fearful 
Russian wind should blow again. 

The goal of their walk was an old mosque 
built of wood, a half-forgotten place of pilgrimage 
on a plateau overlooking the sea of storms, fully 
exposed to the assaults of the north wind. ‘There, 
in a tumbledown hovel, was a very humble café 
kept by a white-haired old man. They sat down 
in front of it to look at the pale immensity 
slumbering below. The few trees surviving here 
leaned over, all gnarled, and all on the same 
side, having yielded at last to the continuous 


XXV DISENCHANTED 227 


buffeting of the same blast. The air was bright 
and sharp. 

They did not talk about the book, nor about 
anything in particular. Only Zeyneb was at all 
serious to-day; Djenan and Melek were wholly 
intoxicated by this clandestine folly, wholly 
lost in contemplation of the wild magnificence 
of the mountains, and the cliffs which fell sheer 
at their feet into the sea. To be alone here 
with André, the little rebels had dropped two 
negroes and as many negresses in villages on 
the road, paying them to keep silence; but their 
daring, hers always successful, no longer gave 
them any alarms. And the white-bearded old 
man brought them coffee in his old blue cups, 
outside, in the presence of the gloomy Black Sea, 
never doubting that his customer was a Turkish 
Bey on a pilgrimage with the ladies of his harem. 

The air, however, was turning cold after the 
heat of the valley, and Zeyneb was seized by 
a little cough, which she strove to conceal, but 
which told the same ominous tale as the slight 
huskiness of her voice. ‘The two others looked 
at each other, and André understood that this 
was no new subject of anxiety; they tried to 
draw the folds of her dress over her slender 
bosom, but the invalid, or merely ailing victim, 
shrugged her shoulders. ‘Never mind,’ she said, 
with the calmest indifference. ‘Dear me, what 
does it matter?’ 

Zeyneb was the only one of the three whom 
André fancied he to some extent really knew. 
Disenchanted in both senses of the word: out 


228 DISENCHANTED XXV 


of conceit with life, wishing for nothing, looking 
forward to nothing, but resigned with unvarying 
sweetness; a being all of lassitude and tenderness, 
precisely the soul that fitted her charming face 
with its regular features, and her eyes which had 
the smile of desperation. Melek, on the contrary, 
who seemed to have a kind little heart, never 
ceased to be fantastical to excess, sometimes violent, 
and then a child again, ready to mock and laugh 
at everything. As to Djenan, the most exquisite of 
the three, how mysterious she still remained under 
her eternal black veil — very complicated, influ- 
enced by the literature of all ages; at the same time 
uncertain, at once submissive and haughty, not 
hesitating at times to reveal herself with an almost 
disconcerting freedom, and then shrinking back 
into her ivory tower, more distant than ever. ‘As 
for her,’ André said to himself, ‘I cannot make 
out what she wants of me, nor why I am already 
so fond of her. One might sometimes fancy that 
we had some memory in common of a remote 
unknown past. I shall not begin to read her till 
the day when she shows me at last what sort of 
eyes she has; but I am afraid she never will.’ 

They had to go down the hill again early, to 
the valley of Beicos, to give them time to pick up 
their slaves on the way and get home before night. 
So they presently were lost again in the woodland 
path, and they insisted that André himself should 
pluck for each of them a sprig of the heath which 
made the whole hillside rosy; it was to wear, out 
of childish bravado, that evening at dinner with 
their grandparents and strict old uncles. 


XXV DISENCHANTED 229 


On reaching the plain he left them, as a matter 
of prudence, but watched them as they went, walk- 
ing at some distance behind them. ‘There were 
few people now in the valley of the Grand Signior, 
where the sun was already turning to the redder 
gold of evening. Only a few women wearing white 
veils were sitting on the grass in groups far apart. 
The audacious three went on at a slow and grace- 
ful pace; Zeyneb and Melek, in silks of the palest 
hue, almost white, one on each side of Djenan, an 
elegy in black; their skirts trailed over the ex- 
quisite lawn, over the short fine grass, bending 
the lilac crocus flowers, and sweeping along the 
yellow leaves already fallen from the plane-trees. 
They really looked like three Elysian shades 
crossing the vale of perfect rest; she in the 
middle, in her mourning, was a shade not as yet 
consoled, no doubt, for the loss of earthly love. 

He lost sight of them when they reached the 
great trees, the sacred wood at the further end of 
the secluded plain. The sun was sinking behind 
the hills, slowly abandoning this Eden; the sky 
was clear, with the green transparency of a fine 
summer evening, and tiny clouds crossing it in 
long mares’ tails looked like orange-coloured 
flames. The other happy shades, who had been 
long sitting here and there on the crocus-flowered 
grass, all rose now to leave too, but very gently, 
as beseems shades. The shepherds’ pipes in the 
distance began their old-world trilling to call the 
goats together, and the whole place was preparing 
for a night of infinite solitude at the foot of the 
forests, under the stars. 


230 DISENCHANTED XXV 


André Lhéry regretfully turned his steps 
towards the Bosphorus, which he soon saw lying 
like a sheet of rosy silver between the black masses 
of the giant planes on the shore. He bade his 
rowers not to hurry, not feeling eager to return 
to the European shore at Therapia, where the huge 
hotels were turning on their electric lights, and 
tuning, more or less, their blatant bands for the 
evening of supposed fashion. 


XXVI 
LETTERS received by André on the following day: 


September 18, 1904. 


‘Our Friend, do you know there is one point 
you ought to enlarge upon, and which would 
afford the most essentially * “harem” passage in 
your book. That is the sense of emptiness which 
is produced in our life by the necessity of never 
talking to any but women, of having no intimate 
friends but women, of living always among our- 
selves, our fellow-women. Our friends? but, 
mercy, they are as weak and as weary as we are! 
In our harems weakness — so many weaknesses 
rather, combined and huddled together, are sick 
at heart, suffer the more from being what they 
are, and cry out for strength. O for some one 
with whom these poor, neglected, humiliated beings 
might talk and exchange their little ideas, timid 
and innocent as they generally are. We so sorely 
need a man friend, a firm masculine hand on 
which to lean, and strong enough to uphold us 
when we are ready to fall. Not a father, not 
a husband, not a brother; no, a friend, I say. 

231 


232 DISENCHANTED XXVI 


A being of our own choice, very superior to our- 
selves, who would be at once severe and kind, 
tender and serious, and who would feel for us 
a purely protecting friendship. Such men are to 
be found in your world, are they not? 

“ZEYNEB. 


‘An existence in which there is nothing! Con- 
ceive of its horror. Hapless souls that have now 
found their wings, and which are kept captive; 
hearts in which the young sap is fermenting, and 
which are forbidden to act, which can do nothing, 
not even do good, and devour themselves, or are 
worn out by unrealisable dreams. Can you imagine 
what dreary days your three friends would be living 
through if you had not come? Days all exactly 
alike under the vigilant care of old uncles and 
old women, whose unspoken disapproval constantly 
oppresses them. 

“Of all the drama of my marriage of which I 
have told you, nothing was left at the bottom of 
my heart but rancour against love, at any rate as it 
is understood among us — a disbelief in its joys, 
and an ineffaceable bitter taste on my lips. At the 
same time, I knew that there was in the West 
another kind of love than that which had so dis- 
appointed me, and I set to work to study it with 
passion in literature and in history; and, as I had 
foreseen, I found it had inspired many follies, but 
also the greatest deeds. I found it at the core of 
everything evil in the world, but also of everything 
good and sublime. And the more I discerned the 
brilliant lot of the Latin woman, the more bitter 


XXVI DISENCHANTED 233 


was my sadness. Oh, how happy in your Western 
lands was the being who for centuries had been 
cared for, fought for, suffered for; who might 
love and choose as she listed, who had a right to 
demand that a man should be worthy of her before 
giving herself to him! What a place she filled 
in your life, how undisputed was her traditional 
supremacy ! 

“Whereas in us Moslem women almost every 
element was unawakened. Self-consciousness and 
a sense of our value were scarcely alert, and 
every one about us was perversely ignorant 
and supremely scornful of the evolution that was 
beginning. 

“Would no voice uplift itself to proclaim the 
blindness of men, kind and tender as they often 
were; our fathers, our husbands, our brothers? 
For ever, and in the eyes of the whole world, would 
the Turkish woman remain a slave, purchased for 
her beauty alone, or a Hanum, fair and fat, smok- 
ing cigarettes and sunk in perpetual Kzef. 

“Then you came, and you know the rest. We 
all three are at your command as faithful secretaries 
— we three, and many more of our sisters if we 
are not enough — we will lend you our eyes to see 
with, our heart to understand with, and offer our 
whole soul to serve you. 

“We may yet again meet you perhaps once or 
twice, here or on the Bosphorus, before we must 
return to the city. We have so many trustworthy 
friends among the ladies who live on this shore 
ever ready to help us to prove an alibi. 

‘But oh, I dread — not your regard for us as 


234 DISENCHANTED XXVI 


you said, it is above suspicion — but I dread the 
grief to come, after you are gone. 

‘Farewell, André, our friend — my friend. May 
joy go with you! DJENAN.’ 


‘Djenan, I am sure, has not told you that the 
lady in pink who smoked your cigarettes the other 
evening at the house of the Saint-Enogats — Ma- 
dame de Durmont, not to give her her real name — 
has just spent this afternoon with us, on the pretext 
of singing Grieg’s duets with Zeyneb. But she 
only talked, and only of you, with such enthusiasm 
that a young Russian lady who was present could 
not get over her amazement. We were alarmed 
lest she suspected something, and was laying a trap 
for us, so we abused you finely, biting our lips to 
keep ourselves from laughing, and she was quite 
taken in, and defended you vehemently. Which is 
as much as to say that her whole visit was a cross- 
examination as to our several views of you. What 
a lucky mortal you are! 

“We have just been concocting no end of 
delightful plans for seeing you again. Does your 
French servant, who is so much to be depended 
on, know how to drive? If you make him also 
wear a fez, we might take a drive with you in a 
closed carriage, he on the box. But all this we 
must arrange viva voce the next time we meet. 

‘Your three friends join in pretty and tender 
messages. MELEK.’ 


‘On no account miss going to the Sweet Wart 
to-morrow; we will try to go there, too. As 


XXVI DISENCHANTED 235 


on former occasions, pass in your caique under the 
Asiatic shore, under our windows. If you see the 
corner of a white handkerchief peeping through 
the lattice, it will mean that we shall j yom you Lt 
the handkerchief is blue, it means “ Disaster’’: we 
are imprisoned. M. 


Thenceforth till the end of the season they held 
their stolen and wordless meetings at the Sweet 
Waters of Asia. Every time the weather was fine 
on a Friday, or on a Tuesday, which is also a day 
for an outing on the pretty shady river, André’s 
caique met and remet that of his friends, but 
without the faintest sign which could have be- 
trayed their intimacy to the hundreds of women’s 
eyes on the alert on the shore, peeping through 
the openings in their muslin veils. If a favourable 
instant presented itself, Melek or Zeyneb ventured 
to smile under the black gauze. As to Djenan, 
she adhered to her threefold shroud, as complete a 
disguise as a mask; the women in other caiques 
were a little surprised at it, to be sure, but no one 
thought any harm of it, the spot being ill-fitted 
for any wrong doing; and those who recognised 
her by the boatmen’s livery were content to 
remark without ill-feeling that ‘little Dyjenan 
Tewfik Pasha always had been eccentric.’ 


XXVII 
DJENAN TO ANDRE 


September 28, 1904. 


“WHAT a new experience it is to us to know that 
among the crowd at the Sweet Waters there is a 
man who is our friend. Among the strangers 
who will remain for ever unknown to us, and 
who regard us as strange, inscrutable little animals, 
to know that there is one eye that seeks us — us in 
particular, not the other similarly shrouded women 
— that one man bestows on us a thought of affec- 
tionate pity. When our boats touched you could 
not see me hidden under my thick veil, but I was 
there, and happy to be invisible, smiling into your 
eyes which gazed in the direction of mine. 

“Is it because you were so kind and so simple, 
so precisely the friend I have longed for, the other 
day on the hill overlooking the Black Sea, during 
our almost speechless meeting there? Is it because 
I have been aware at last, under the brevity of your 
letters, of a little true and emotional affection? I 
do not know; but you no longer seem so remote 
from me. Oh, André, if you could but know 
what an ideal sentiment of tender admiration 
means to souls so long repressed as ours! 

‘DJENAN.’ 
236 


XXVII DISENCHANTED 237 


They corresponded frequently this closing 
summer, to arrange their perilous meetings. They 
could still send their letters without much difficulty 
by the hand of some faithful negro, who would 
cross to Therapia in a boat, or who followed him 
in the evening to the lovely valley of the Grand 
Signior. And he, who had no means of reply 
but through the post-office at Stamboul, generally 
answered by some secret signal as he passed in his 
caique under their forbidding windows. They 
took every advantage of these last days by the 
Bosphorus, before returning to Constantinople, 
where a stricter watch would be kept. But autumn 
was felt to be coming on with strides, especially 
in the gloomy evenings. Heavy black clouds 
sailed down from the north on the blast from 
Russia, and squalls would burst, bringing to 
naught their most elaborately prepared plans. 

Not far from the plain of Beicos, in an un- 
known and deserted hollow, they had found a 
little glade of virgin forest round a pool full of 
water-lilies. It was a melancholy but safe retreat, 
shut in by steep slopes and a tangle of verdure, 
with only one way in, where Jean Renaud kept 
watch, with a whistle in case of alarm. There 
they met twice by the green stagnant water, amid 
huge reeds and ferns, in the shade of the almost 
leafless trees. The flowers were in no respect 
dissimilar to those of France, and the gigantic 
ferns were but the tall osmunda of our marsh 
lands; all more luxuriant, perhaps, in consequence 
of the damper climate and hotter summers. ‘The 
three little black spectres moved about this jungle 


238 DISENCHANTED XXVII 


somewhat embarrassed by their trains and their too 
thin shoes; and they would seat themselves in some 
chosen spot in a group round André for a few 
moments of serious talk, or of perfect silence, 
anxiously watching overhead the swirl of October 
storm-clouds, which sometimes darkened the day 
and threatened a heavy shower. Zeyneb and 
Melek now and again would lift their veil, to 
smile on their friend, looking straight into his 
eyes with frank confidence; but Djenan, never. 

André, with all his voyages in the tropics, had 
not for many long years lived so much among 
the plants of a cooler climate. ‘These reeds and 
harts’-tongues, these mosses and noble osmundas, 
reminded him exactly of a marsh in his own 
country which as a child he had loved to visit in 
solitude, while he dreamed of virgin forests he 
had never yet seen. And this Asiatic marsh was 
so identically the same as his own that he could 
fancy himself at home there, carried back to the 
first period of his awakening to life. But then 
here were the three little Eastern fairies, 
whose presence was such a strange and delightful 
anachronism. 


It was Friday the 7th of October, the last 
Friday at the Sweet Waters of Asia, for the 
Embassies were to return to Constantinople in the 
course of the following week, and the household 
of the three Turkish ladies was preparing to do 
likewise. All the houses by the Bosphorus would 
now be closing their doors and windows for six 
months of wind and rain or snow. 


XXVII DISENCHANTED 239 


André and his friends had promised each other 
that they would do everything in their power to 
meet that day at the Sweet Waters, since that 
would be the end of all things till next summer, 
so full of uncertainty. 

The weather was threatening, and he, as he set 
off in defiance of everything in his caique, said to 
himself: ‘They will not let them escape with this 
rising wind.’ But as he passed under their win- 
dows he saw through the lattice the white handker- 
chief flourished by Melek, and which meant in their 
code, ‘Go on; we have leave, and shall follow.’ 

There was no crowd to-day on the little stream, 
nor on the grass-plots where the autumn crocus 
bloomed among the dead leaves. Few Europeans, 
or none; only Turks, and they chiefly women. 
And in the beautiful eyes, which were left uncovered 
by the white veils worn country-fashion, there were 
melancholy looks, no doubt because of the approach 
of winter, the season when the austerity of the 
harems is the strictest, and imprisonment almost 
unbroken. 

They met two or three times. Even Melek’s 
gaze through her veil, her black veil for town 
wear, was full of sadness — the sadness always felt 
in the waning season, and when things are wearing 
to an end. 

When it was time to leave, the Bosphorus, at 
the mouth of the little river, had effects of tragical 
beauty.. The Saracen fortress on the Asiatic shore 
by which the boat must pass was crimson in the 
low sun, and its battlements flame colour. While 
the other castle, much more colossal, opposite on 


2.40 DISENCHANTED XXVII 


the European shore, looked, on the contrary, over- 
poweringly gloomy, with its walls and towers piled 
up one above the other to the top of the hill. The 
surface of the sea was white with foam lashed by 
blasts that were already keen. And a calamitous 
sky spread over it all; bronze or copper-coloured 
clouds, tossed and rent against a lurid background. 

The little ladies happily had not far to go close 
under the Asiatic shore to reach the old marble 
quay, always so carefully guarded, where their 
negroes awaited them. But André, who had to 
cross the strait, did not arrive till after dark, his 
oarsmen streaming with perspiration and salt water, 
their velvet jackets and gold embroidery soaked 
and pitiable. Late in the year, the return passage 
from the Sweet Waters has such surprises in store, 
the first aggressions of the Russian wind, and they 
strike to the heart as the shortening days do. 

In his own house, where he brought in the 
frozen rowers to warm them, he heard on his 
arrival a curious small music which filled the 
house; such music as the goatherds had made at 
sunset in the woods and valleys of Beicos in Asia 
—a monotonous quick air on low-pitched notes, 
swifter than a tarantella or a fugue, and at the 
same time so doleful as to bring the tears. One 
of his Turkish servants was blowing with all the 
power of his lungs into a long pipe, suddenly 
revealing himself as a great performer of wild and 
plaintive runs. 

‘Where did you learn that?’ he asked. 

‘In my country, among the hills near Eski 
Chehir. I used to play that in the evening when 


XXVII DISENCHANTED 241 


I called in my father’s goats.’ This alone had 
been wanting, such a tune as this, to fill full the 
causeless, nameless anguish of such an evening. 

And for a long time André would have this 
air on the flute played to him by twilight to 
bring before him the unspeakableness of all these 
things — his return from the Sweet Waters for 
the last time; the three black spectres on the 
tossing waves, going home in the dusk to their 
prison in the dismal harem at the foot of the 
mountains and the woods; the first gale of 
autumn; the grass strewn with lilac colchicum 
and yellow leaves; the end of the Bosphorus 
season; the death of the summer. 


XXVITI 


Anpré had been settled in Pera for about a fort- 
night, and had been able to meet his little friends 
once in the old house near Sultan Selim. They 
had introduced to him an unknown lady, hidden 
under such thick veils that her voice was almost 
smothered. On the morrow he received the 
following letter. 


‘I am the phantom of yesterday, Monsieur 
Lhéry. I did not know how to speak to you, but 
for the sake of the book you have promised to 
write for us I propose to give you an account of a 
Turkish lady’s day. It will be quite seasonable 
too, for here we are nearly in November; the cold 
and gloom, and above all an increase of weariness 
and dark days, loom before us. The day of a 
Turkish lady in winter. To begin — 

‘She rises late, very late. Her toilet is slow, 
dilatory; she always has very long hair, too thick 
and too heavy to be arranged. And she thinks 
how pretty she is in the silvered mirror, how 
young and charming; and it makes her sad. 

‘Then there is the silent walk round the rooms 
to see if everything is in proper order; lingering 
over a few favourite things, souvenirs and portraits 

242 


XXVIII DISENCHANTED 243 


of which the care seems extremely important. 
Then comes breakfast, often in solitude, in a large 
room, surrounded by negresses or Circassian slaves ; 
her hands are chilled as she touches the silver plate 
on the table, above all her soul is chilled; she can 
talk to the slaves, asks them questions without 
waiting for the answers. 

‘And now what can she do till the evening? 
The harems of a past time, when there were 
several wives, must have been less dull; they 
kept each other company. What then can she 
do? Paint in water-colour? We can all paint 
beautifully in water-colour, Monsieur Lhéry. Ah, 
the screens we have painted, the fans, the hand 
screens! Or play the piano, or the lute? Read 
Pierre Bourget or André Lhéry? Or do some 
embroidery, take one of our long golden strips and 
be absorbed, all alone, in seeing our white, dainty 
little fingers, loaded with rings, fly over the stitches ? 
What we want is something new, which we dream 
of without hope; something unexpected — a flash, 
a thrill, an excitement, but which never comes. 
We want to get out walking, in spite of the mud, 
in spite of the snow, not having stirred for a fort- 
night; but we are forbidden to go out alone. 
There is no conceivable errand as an excuse, 
nothing. We pine for space, we crave air. Even 
if we have a garden it seems impossible to breathe 
there, because the walls are too high. 

“A bell rings. If it were but some catastrophe! 
What joy! Or even only a visitor. 

‘A visitor! It is a visitor; the slaves are 
hurrying along the passages. We jump up; a 


244. DISENCHANTED XXVIII 


looking-glass, quick, to make up our eyes, in 
eager haste. Who can it be? Ah, a charming 
young friend, not long married. She comes in. 
Mutual delight, eager hands, rosy lips kissing pale 
cheeks. 

*“*Have I come in a good hour? What were 
you doing, dear?” 

‘“ Being bored.” 

“Well, I have come to fetch you for a drive 
together, anywhere you please.” 

‘A minute later and we drive off in a closed 
carriage. On the box by the coachman sits a 
negro, Dilaver, the inevitable Dilaver, without 
whom we may not stir, and who will report on 
how we have spent the time. 

“The two friends chat. “Well—and do you 
love Ali Bey?” 

‘Yes,’ replies the bride, “but because I must 
love some one. I am greedy for affection. This 
does for the present; if later I see my way to 
something better - 

“Well, I do not love my husband — no, not 
at all; to love on compulsion, no! I am not one 
of the women that bend.” 

‘The carriage rumbles on at the full speed of 
two splendid horses. We must not stop and get 
out; that would be quite incorrect. And we 
envy the beggar women who are free, and who 
look at us as they pass. 

‘Presently, at the entrance to the Bazaar, there 
is a crowd of common folk buying roast chest- 
nuts. “I am so hungry!” says one. “Have you 
brought any money ?” 





XXVIII DISENCHANTED 245 


“No. Dilaver has some. Dilaver, buy us 
some chestnuts.” 

“What can they be put into? We hold out 
our scented lace handkerchiefs; the chestnuts are 
handed to us in these, and smell of heliotrope. 
And this is the great event of the day, this 
luncheon, which it amuses us to eat like the 
common women, but under our veils in a closed 
caltiage. 

“On our return we embrace again at parting, 
and repeat the eternal formulas which ‘Turkish 
women preach to each other: “ Now, no chimerical 
dreams, no vain regrets. Be firm, hold your 
own!” But it makes us smile, even as we speak, 
the advice is so familiar and so threadbare. 

‘The visitor leaves. It is evening; lamps are 
lighted very early, for night soon falls in a harem 
in consequence of the close lattices to the windows. 
Your fourth spectre of yesterday, Monsieur Lhéry, 
is alone again. But here comes the Bey, her 
master, announced by the clatter of his sword on 
the stairs. Then the poor little woman’s soul is 
more chilled than ever. As a matter of habit she 
looks in a glass; the reflected image is really very 
pretty, and she thinks: “All this beauty for him! 
What a pity!” 

“He, stretching himself insolently on a pile of 
cushions, begins a history: 

*“To-day, you know, my dear, at the 
palace te 

“Oh, yes, the palace, his fellow-officers, his guns, 
new weapons, these are all he cares for; nothing 
else, ever. 





246 DISENCHANTED —_ xxv 


‘She does not listen, she is ready to cry. Then 
she is told she is “out of sorts.” She asks leave 
to withdraw to her own room, and soon she is 
sobbing bitterly, her head on a pillow of silk 
brocaded with gold and silver, while the European 
ladies of Pera are going to a ball or to the theatre, 
and are gay and admired under a blaze of lights. 

ee, eee 


XXIX 


For the second time since their return from the 
Bosphorus André and the three were together in 
the secret house in the heart of old Stamboul. 

“You do not know,’ said Melek, ‘where we 
are to meet next — elsewhere, just forachange. A 
lady we know, who lives near Mehmed Fatih, your 
favourite haunt, has offered us the opportunity of 
meeting at her house. It is quite a Turkish house 
with no master; it is a real chance, quiet and 
safe. And I am preparing a surprise for you in 
a harem more luxurious than this, and at least 
equally oriental. You will see!’ 

André did not heed her. He had made up 
his mind to burn his ships to-day, but at any cost 
to see Djenan’s eyes; and he was thinking only of 
that, well aware that if he blundered, and if she 
persisted in her refusal, with her inflexible temper, 
there would be an end of his hopes for ever. Now 
the eternal black veil over her young face had 
become to him an annoyance, an obsession, an 
ever growing distress, as by degrees he became 
more deeply attached to her. Only to know what 
there was beneath it! Only to see for an instant 
the features of this siren of the heavenly voice, 
and stamp it for ever on his memory. Besides, 

247 


248 DISENCHANTED XXIX 


why should she hide herself, and not her sisters? 
What difference was there between them? What 
unconfessed impulse ruled the conduct of that pure 
and haughty spirit? Now and again an explana- 
tion occurred to him, but he at once drove it from 
his mind as absurd and fatuous. ‘Nonsense,’ he 
always told himself, ‘she is young enough to be my 
daughter. It is not common sense.’ 

And there she sat, close to him. He need only 
put out his hand to raise the piece of stuff which 
hung hardly lower than the frill of an ordinary 
black mask. Why was it that an act so simple, 
so tempting, would be as impossible, as shocking, 
as a crime? 

Time was slipping by; it would soon be the 
hour of parting. The beams of the November 
sun wete rising towards the roofs — that same sun- 
beam on the opposite wall, of which the reflection 
cast a little light into this humble room. 

‘Listen to me, dear little friend,’ he suddenly 
exclaimed. ‘At any cost I must see your eyes. 
I cannot, I declare to you I cannot, go on like this. 
In the first place, it is not fair play, since you can 
see mine all the while through that double gauze — 
triple for aught I know — which protects you. 
But, if you choose, only your eyes, understand. 
Instead of that heart-breaking black tcharchaf 
come next time in a yashmak, as austere a yashmak 
as you please, only showing your eyes and the eye- 
brows which contribute to the expression of your 
gaze. The rest of your face conceal from me 
for ever — I submit, but not your eyes. I entreat 


you, I implore you. Why do you do this? 


XXIX DISENCHANTED 249 


Why? Your sisters do not. It is want of con- 
fidence on your part, and that is cruel.’ 

She sat a moment speechless. André could 
hear the blood throbbing in his arteries. 

‘Well,’ she said at last in a tone of grave de- 
termination, ‘look, André; am I distrustful ?’ 
And raising her veil, which she flung back, she 
uncovered the whole of her face, and fixed on her 
friend’s eyes, with firm straight gaze, her own 
lovely young eyes of the colour of the deep sea. 

It was the first time she had called him by his 
name, excepting in her letters; and her resolve, 
her action, had a sort of solemnity in them, so 
that the other two little shades sat mute in surprise, 
while André imperceptibly shrank back under the 
steady regard of this apparition, as if he had been 
a little frightened, or his eyes were dazzled and he 
would not let it be seen. 


XXX 


In the heart of Stamboul, under a November sky. 
The maze of ancient streets, of course sunk in 
silence, their paving-stones set in funereal weeds, 
under low black clouds; the tangle of wooden 
houses originally painted a dark ochre yellow, all 
tumbledown and askew, but still with doubly 
screened windows, impenetrable to the eye from 
outside. And it was this, all this worm-eaten 
decrepitude which, seen from afar, looked as a 
whole like some vast fairy city, but which, seen 
close, must bitterly disappoint the horde of tourists. 
For André still, and for some others of his mind, 
these things, even close at hand, preserve their 
charm of immutability, of meditation, and of 
prayer. And then, every here and there, is some 
exquisite detail; a group of ancient tombs deli- 
cately chiselled at a street corner, under a plane- 
tree three centuries old; or a marble fountain with 
almost effaced arabesques in gold. 

André, wearing a Turkish fez, was making his 
way through these alleys by the help of a map 
drawn by Melek, with notes to guide him. He 
stopped once to look at a litter of the little vagrant 
dogs which swarm in Constantinople, on which 
the good souls in the neighbourhood had, as usual, 

250 


RXX DISENCHANTED 251 


bestowed an alms in the shape of a bed of rags 
and a bit of old carpet for an awning. They lay 
there with an air of amiable contentment. He 
did not, however, stoop to pat them, for fear of 
betraying himself; for Orientals, though com- 
passionate to dogs, would scorn to touch one, and 
reserve all their petting for cats. But the mother 
came to wriggle at his feet in gratitude, to show 
how honoured she felt by his notice. 

“The fourth house to the left, past a funereal 
kiosque and a cypress tree,’ was the spot to which 
he was bidden to-day by the caprice of his three 
friends. A black figure with her veil down, who 
did not seem to be Melek, awaited him within the 
partly open door, led him upstairs without saying 
a word, and left him alone in a very oriental little 
room much darkened by harem lattices; there 
were divans all round, and texts of Islam hung on 
the walls. In an adjoining room he heard low 
voices, light steps, and the rustle of silks. 

And when the same veiled figure signed to 
him to follow her into the other room, André 
could have thought himself Aladdin entering his 
seraglio. His three austere little black spectres 
were there, metamorphosed into three odalisques 
sparkling with gold embroidery and spangles, in 
delightful old-world magnificence. Very old 
Mecca veils, in white gauze thickly spangled, 
covered their hair done in long plaits, and fell back 
over their shoulders; they stood up, their faces 
uncovered, and bowed to him as to their master, 
smiling with all their fresh youth and rosy lips. 

These were their grandmothers’ dresses and 


252 DISENCHANTED XXX 


jewels, brought out for him from their cedar chests ; 
and with the tact of modern elegance they had 
selected from among the dim and faded satins and 
archaic embroidery in gold, of flowers in high 
relief, exactly such as made the most exquisite 
combinations. ‘They presented such a spectacle as 
no one now ever sees, and which his European 
eyes could never have hoped to see. Behind them, 
in the deeper shadow, reclining on the divans, were 
five or six trustworthy accomplices, perfectly still, 
entirely black, in tcharchafs with the veil down; 
and their silent presence enhanced the mystery. 
All this, which would never have been done for 
anybody else, was an act of unheard-of temerity, 
an appalling defiance of danger. And outside, and 
around this forbidden meeting, they could feel 
the listening melancholy of Stamboul wrapped in 
winter fog, the wordless disapproval of a quarter 
full of mosques and tombs. 

They amused themselves by treating him as a 
pasha, and danced before him — a dance like that 
of their grandmothers in the plains of Karadjemir, 
very chaste and slow, with much waving of bare 
arms, to an Asiatic pastoral air played upon a lute 
by one of the veiled women, in the gloom at the 
end of the room. Lithe, gay, and affecting lan- 
guishing airs, they were in these costumes purely 
oriental — these three over-cultured little persons 
with eager, anxious spirits that had pondered over 
Kant and Schopenhauer. 

“Why are you not gay to-day ?” asked Djenan 
of André in a low voice. ‘Does this bore you — 
this that we arranged for you?’ 


XXX DISENCHANTED 253 


‘On the contrary, you enchant me. But I 
shall never again see anything so rare and exquisite. 
No — I will tell you what saddens me when these 
ladies in black are gone. It may perhaps make 
you a little anxious, but at least 1 am sure that it 
will not distress you.’ 

The black ladies did not stay long. Among 
those invited — who were all revolutionary it need 
not be said — André, as soon as they began to talk, 
recognised the voices of the two girls who had 
come one day to Sultan Selim, those who had a 
French grandmother and dreamed of flight and 
escape. Melek implored them to raise their veils 
out of bravado, in defiance of tyranny; but they 
refused, saying with a light laugh: ‘But it took 
six months to persuade you to lift yours!’ 

There was also a woman, apparently young, 
who spoke French like a Parisian, and who was 
enthusiastic about the book promised by André 
Lhéry. She asked him: 

‘You intend, I suppose — and that is what we 
desire — to show the Turkish woman at the point 
she has now reached in her evolution? Well, then 
— if you will forgive an ignorant little oriental for 
offering an opinion to André Lhéry — if you write 
a quite impersonal romance with a heroine or a 
group of heroines as the central interest, do you 
not run the risk of ceasing to be the impulsive 
writer we all delighted in? Could it not be 
rather a sort of sequel to Medjeh — your return 
to the East after the lapse of years ?’ 

‘I said exactly the same thing,’ exclaimed 
Djenan. ‘But it was so badly received that I 


254 DISENCHANTED XXX 


hardly dare again explain my humble ideas about 
the book.’ 

‘Badly received, yes,’ he replied, laughing. 
‘But did I not promise, nevertheless, that, short of 
putting myself on the stage, I would write exactly 
whatever you wished? On the contrary; explain 
to me fully what your ideas are, now on the spot, 
and the spectre ladies who hear us will perhaps 
consent to contribute theirs.’ 

“The romance or the idyl of an Eastern woman 
is always the same,’ said the lady who had already 
spoken. ‘There are always numbers of letters 
and stolen interviews; love, more or less fulfilled, 
and at the end death; sometimes, but very rarely, 
an escape. I am speaking, you understand, of a 
love affair with a foreigner, the only thing of which 
an educated Eastern woman is capable — a woman 
of to-day who has learned what lies within her.’ 

“How unjust to the men of your own race this 
spirit of revolt has made you!’ exclaimed André. 
‘Only among those known to me I could name 
some who are more interesting than we are, and 
more 

But Djenan interrupted him: ‘Escape, no,’ 
said she; ‘only death. And I come back to 
what I was suggesting the other day to M. Lhéry 
Why not choose a form which enables him, with- 
out appearing in person, to set forth his own 
personal impression? For instance, “a stranger as 
like him as his brother,’ a man spoilt by life as he 
has been, a writer much read by women, comes 
back to Stamboul one day, a place he has loved 


1*Un étranger qui me ressemblait comme un frére’ —(A. de Musset). 





XXX DISENCHANTED 255 


in his youth. Does he revive his youth and 
enthusiasms? (It is for you to say, M. Lhéry.) 
He meets one of us who has once on a time 
written to him, like many another poor little thing, 
dazzled by his halo. But now, what twenty years 
_ ago would have been love, is no more than artistic 
and curious interest. You understand, I should 
not make him a “man of destiny” — they have 
gone out of fashion since 1830, but merely an 
artist who is amused by every new and rare im- 
pression. So he accepts several successive assigna- 
tions because they are dangerous and unheard of. 
Then what can come of them if not love? But 
for her, not for him. He is a mere dilettante, and 
sees nothing in the whole business but just an 
adventure.’ 

‘Nay!’ she suddenly exclaimed, rising with 
childish irritation. ‘You all sit there listening to 
me, and making me specechify like a blue-stocking. 
I am making myself ridiculous! I will dance 
sooner — another of my village dances; I am an 
odalisque, and that will beseem me _ better. 
Chahendeh, will you be so kind as to play the 
Ronde des Pastoures that we were practising when 
M. Lhéry came in, you know?’ 

And she tried to take her two sisters by the 
hand to dance with her. But every one protested, 
and demanded the end of the argument. To 
make her sit down they all tried to drag her, the 
two houris in spangles, as well as the phantoms in 
black. 

“Now, you frighten me,’ she said; ‘really, you 
tease me! The end of the story? But it was 


256 DISENCHANTED XXX 


finished, it seems to me. Did we not agree just 
now that for a Moslem woman love has no issue 
but escape or death? Well, then? My heroine, 
mine, is far too proud to fly with a foreigner. She 
must then die; not directly of her love for the 
man, but, if you like, of the inflexible demands of 
harem life, which give her no chance of finding 
consolation in action for her love and dream.’ 

André watched her while she spoke. Her 
appearance to-day, as an odalisque in this century- 
old finery, made her language seem yet more in- 
congruous; her dark sea-green eyes were resolutely 
fixed on the old ceiling with its complicated 
arabesques, and she poured out the words with the 
impersonality of a speaker inventing a pleasing tale 
but who had no interest in the matter. She was 
unfathomable ! 

Presently, when the black ladies had left, she 
came up to him, quite simple and confiding, like a 
contented little comrade. 

“Now, they are gone. What is the matter?’ 

“The matter — with me? Your cousins may 
hear, I suppose ?’ 

‘Certainly,’ said she, half offended; ‘what 
secrets can we have from them— you and I? 
Have I not told you from the very first that we 
three must always be for you but one soul?’ 

“Well, then, the matter is that as I gaze at you 
I am bewitched and almost terrified by a likeness I 
see. Even the other day, when you just lifted 
your veil for the first time, did you not see me 
start and shrink back? I saw the same oval face, 
the same look, the same eyebrows, which she, 


XXX DISENCHANTED 257 


however, used to join with a touch of henna. But 
I did not then see your hair, which you are show- 
ing me to-day, just like hers, in plaits as she used 
to wear hers.’ 

She answered very gravely. 

‘I am like your Nedjibeh. 1!— Ah, it startles 
me as much as it does you, believe me. When I tell 
you, André, that for five or six years that has been 
my fondest dream 

They gazed at each other, dumb in each other’s 
presence. Djenan’s eyebrows were a little raised, 
as if to open her eyes the wider, and he saw the 
gleam of her deep-sea eyes; while the two others in 
the harem, where early twilight was creeping on, 
stood apart, respecting this melancholy contempla- 
tion. 

‘Stay where you are, André, and do not move,’ 
she suddenly exclaimed. ‘And you two, come 
and look at him — at our friend. Standing so, in 
this light, would you not think he was hardly 
thirty ?’ 

To him, who had quite forgotten his age, as 
sometimes happened, and who at that moment had 
been feeling, fancying, that he was young again, 
this was a cruel blow, reminding him that he was 
now in the decline of life, and that that is the 
irretrievable descent whence no energy can ever 
mount again. “What am I doing,’ he asked him- 
self, ‘mixing myself up with these strange little 
beings who are youth incarnate? Innocent as it 
may be, the adventure into which they have 
beguiled me is no mere adventure to me.’ 

He went away, taking leave more coldly than 

SK 





258 DISENCHANTED XXX 


usual, perhaps, to return, so lonely, through the 
vast city where the autumn day was dying. He 
had to pass through who knows how many different 
quarters and different crowds, through streets that 
went up and streets that went down, and across an 
arm of the sea, before reaching his temporary 
home on the highest point of Pera, which seemed 
to him more odious and empty than ever in the 
late dusk. 

And why was there no light in his room, no 
fire? He called for the Turkish servants whose 
duty it was to attend to it. His French valet, 
hastening to do their work, came in, throwing up 
his hands: ‘They are all gone to the great festival. 
The Turkish carnival begins this evening; impos- 
sible to stop them!’ 

To be sure; he had forgotten. It was the 8th 
of November, corresponding that year with the 
beginning of the month of Ramazan, during which 
Moslems fast rigidly during the day, but fill the 
night with barbaric rejoicings and illuminations. 
He went to one of his windows overlooking 
Stamboul, to see whether the fairy-like scene he 
remembered in his young days a quarter of a 
century before was repeated in the year 1322 of 
the Hegira. Ah, yes, there it was; nothing was 
changed — the matchless mass of the city in the 
dim obscurity was beginning to sparkle at distant 
points, and then was rapidly lighted up everywhere 
at once. All the minarets displayed their double 
or triple crowns of lamps, and looked like gigantic 
shafts of shadow crossed by bars of flame at various 
heights. Arabic inscriptions became visible above 


XXX DISENCHANTED 259 


the mosques, traced in the air, and held up by 
invisible wires, so that at this distance, through the 
haze, they seemed made of stars, like constellations. 
And he remembered that Stamboul, the city of 
silence all the rest of the year, was during the 
nights of Ramazan full of music, singing, and 
dancing; in all the crowds, to be sure, no women 
were to be seen — not even under their ordinary 
disguise as spectres, which still is pleasing — since 
all must be immured at sunset behind their window- 
bars; but there would be a thousand costumes 
from different parts of Asia, and narghilehs, and 
old theatres, and puppet-shows, and shadow figures. 
Add to this that the Perote element, partly from 
fear of blows and partly from stupid misapprehen- 
sion, would be conspicuously absent. So, for- 
getting once more the tale of his years, which had 
saddened him so deeply just before, he put on 
his fez, and, like his Turkish servants, went off to 
the city of light on the other side of the water to 
keep the Eastern feast. 


XXXI 


Tue 12th of November, the 4th of Ramazan, 
was at last the day of their visit together to 
Nedjibeh’s tomb. It had been planned some 
months since, but it was certainly one of their 
most perilous undertakings; in fact, it had been 
put off by reason of its difficulty, and its requiring 
so many hours of truancy, the cemetery being a 
long way off. 

The evening before, Djenan, in writing to him, 
had said: ‘It 1s so fine and blue to-day that I hope 
to-morrow, too, will smile upon us.’ André, 
indeed, had always thought of this pilgrimage as 
being accomplished in one of those still and heady 
days in November when the sun of Stamboul 
lends as a surprise a hothouse warmth, gives an 
illusion of summer, and, as it sets, turns the whole 
city rose colour, then, at the hour of Moghreb, 
lights up the coast of Asia opposite with a yet . 
ruddier flush, for a moment only before night 
brings down with it the chill from the north. 

.But no. When he opened his shutters in the 
morning he saw a black and cloudy sky; the wind 
was blowing a gale, with no hope of a lull. And 
he knew that at the same hour the pretty eyes of 
his cloistered friends were in the same way 

260 


XXXI DISENCHANTED 261 


questioning the weather, anxiously gazing through 
their latticed windows. 

However, there was no question as to going; 
the whole thing had cost infinite pains to arrange, 
with the help of accomplices, paid and unpaid, who 
might not again be available. At the appointed 
hour, half-past one, he betook himself to Stamboul, 
in a fez and his rosary in his hand, to Sultan Fatih, 
in front of the house where four days before they 
had figured as odalisques. He found them ready, 
all in black, impenetrably veiled. Chahendeh 
Hanum, the unknown mistress of the house, had 
wished to join them, so here were four rather 
excited spectres, rather tremulous at the daring of 
their proceedings. André, who would have to do 
the talking on the road, either with the drivers, or, 
in the event of some unexpected meeting, was a 
little anxious about his Turkish, his possible hesi- 
tancy and foreign accent, for the stake was serious. 

“You must have a Turkish name,’ they said, 
“in case we need to address you.’ 

‘Well,’ said he, ‘call me Arif without further 
ado. Of old I used to amuse myself by taking 
the name of Arif Effendi; by this time I may be 
promoted — I am Arif Bey.’ 

A minute later they were walking together in 
the street, an unheard-of thing in Stamboul, the 
foreigner and the four Moslem ladies, Arif Bey 
and his harem. The unrelenting wind brought 
up blacker and blacker clouds, and was chill with 
freezing mist; they were shivering with cold. 
Melek alone kept up her spirits and addressed her 
friend as [kt gheuzoum Beyim Effendim (Monsieur 


262 DISENCHANTED XXXI 


the Bey my two eyes, a common form meaning 
‘As dear to me as my sight.’) But André was 
disturbed by her gaiety, for the face of the dead 
girl haunted him persistently that day, as if it 
were held before him. 

On reaching the stand of carriages for hire 
they took two, one for the Bey and one for his 
four ladies, propriety not allowing a man to ride 
in the same carriage with the women of his harem. 

It was a long drive, one behind the other, 
through the old fanatical quarters of the town, 
before they at last left the walls behind them and 
reached the funereal solitude, the vast graveyards, 
full of ravens at this season, under the black 
cypress trees. 

Between the Adrianople gate and Eyoub, under 
the huge Byzantine walls, they had to get out of 
the carriages, for the road, once paved, is no 
longer possible. On foot they followed the line 
of the ruined ramparts for a short way; through 
gaps and breeches they could now and then get 
glimpses of Stamboul as if to impress more deeply 
on the mind a sense of Islam, here exclusively 
predominant: at a less or greater distance a 
lordly mosque, or many domes piled up into a 
pyramid, or minarets rising from the earth like 
groups of spindles, all white against the inky sky. 

And this scene of impressive desolation through 
which André was now making his way with the 
four black-veiled women, was the very same as 
when he and Nedyjibeh, a quarter of a century 
since, had taken their only walk by daylight; 
here it was that, young and absorbed in each 


XXXI DISENCHANTED 263 


other, they had dared to come like two children 
defying danger; here they had once lingered in 
the pale winter sunshine to listen to a poor little 
misguided tomtit singing in a cypress, thinking it 
was spring; here that, under their very eyes, a 
little Greek girl had been buried — a face of wax. 
And more than a quarter of a century had passed 
over these trivial things, so unique, nevertheless, 
in their two lives, so ineradicable from the memory 
of the one who was still living. 

They presently left the path under these ancient 
walls, and plunged into the realm of the dead under 
an unusually gloomy November sky, among the 
cypresses and the endless company of tombs. The 
Russian blast did not spare them, lashing their 
faces and soaking them with icy vapour. The 
ravens fled before them, hopping leisurely away. 

The slabs of stone over Nedjibeh’s tomb came 
in sight, still very white; and André pointed them 
out to his companions. ‘The inscriptions, regilt in 
the spring, still shone brightly new. 

And at a short distance from these humble 
headstones the four gentle spectres spontaneously 
stood still and began to pray —in the consecrated 
Moslem attitude with both hands held out open, 
as if asking a gift—to pray fervently for the 
soul of the dead. To André this act was so 
unexpected and so touching that he felt his eyes 
suddenly blinded by tears, and for fear of betray- 
ing himself, he, who had no prayer to offer up, 
stood a little way off. 

He had realised what had seemed such an 
impossible dream; he had restored this tomb 


264 DISENCHANTED XXXI 


and placed it in the keeping of other Turkish 
women, capable of respecting it and caring for 
it. The marble slabs were there, upright and 
quite firm, with their fresh gilding; the Turkish 
women too were there, like fairies of remembrance 
brought round this poor, long-neglected, little 
grave, and here was he with them in close com- 
munion of reverence and pity. 

When they had recited the fathia they went 
forward to read the shining inscription. First 
the Arabic verses beginning at the top of the 
stone and sloping downwards. And then, quite 
at the bottom, the name and date: ‘Pray for 
the soul of Nedjibeh Hanum, daughter of Ali 
Djianghir Effendi, who died the 18th of Muharrem 
1297.’ The Circassians, unlike the Turks, use a 
patronymic or rather a tribal name; and here 
Djenan learnt with deep emotion the name 
of Nedjibeh’s family. ‘Why,’ said she, ‘the 
Djianghirs live in my village. They came 
originally from the Caucasus with my ancestors; 
they have lived close to us for two hundred 
years.’ This accounted more clearly for their 
resemblance, which indeed would have been 
surprising merely as a matter of race; there 
was no doubt a tie of blood through the caprice 
of some prince in past days. What mysterious 
ancestor was he who, himself long since dust, 
had bequeathed through who knows how many 
generations, to two women of such different rank 
those rare and lovely eyes? 

The cold was deadly there in the cemetery, 
where they had been for some few minutes stand- 


XXXI DISENCHANTED 265 


ing still; and suddenly Zeyneb’s chest, under the 
black shroud, was shaken by a fearful fit of 
coughing. Let us go!’ said André in dismay. 
‘For pity’s sake let us go, and walk very fast.’ 
Before leaving, each of them must need pick up 
one of the cypress-twigs which were strewn on the 
tomb; and when Melek, whose veils were always 
the thinnest, stooped to pick one up he could see 
that her eyes were full of tears, and he forgave 
her wholly for her levity just now in the street. 

On reaching the carriages they separated, so 
as not needlessly to prolong the peril of being 
together. After they had promised to give him 
the earliest possible information of their safe 
arrival at the harem, for he was a little uneasy 
now the day was closing in, he went off towards 
Eyoub, while their driver took them to the 
Adrianople gate. 


It was now six o'clock. André went home 
to Pera. Such an ominous evening! Looking 
through his window-panes he watched the vast 
panorama sink into the night, and it gave him 
one of the most painful reminiscences he had 
ever experienced of the Constantinople of old, 
the Constantinople of his youth. Darkness had 
followed the twilight, but it was not yet the 
hour when the minarets light up their crowns 
of fire for the fairy-like illumination of a night 
in Ramazan; as yet they were scarcely visible, a 
darker grey against the grey, scarcely paler, of 
the sky. Stamboul, as had often happened, was 
a mass as misty and blurred as he had seen it in 


266 DISENCHANTED XXXI 


his dreams in past years on distant voyages. But 
on the furthest horizon in the west, there was a 
sort of black fringe rather clearly cut out against 
a rosy streak that lingered there, the last reflec- 
tion of the vanished sun. A black fringe: the 
cypresses of the great cemeteries. And he was 
thinking as he fixed his eyes on it: ‘She is 
sleeping in the heart of that immeasurable silence 
and loneliness, under those humble marble slabs 
which I have had restored and regilt out of tender 
pity.’ 

Yes, yes; the tomb was repaired and entrusted 
to Moslem women whose pious care might extend 
over some years yet, for they were young. But 
afterwards? Could this preserve that period of 
his life, that memory of youth and love, from 
falling all too soon into the gulf of rolling years 
and things forgotten of all men? Indeed, the 
cemeteries themselves, though so old and venerated, 
what hope of perpetuity had they? When Islam, 
threatened on all sides, should be driven back on 
Asia, what would the newcomers do with this 
overpowering tract of ancient tombs? Then 
Nedjibeh’s headstone would disappear with so 
many thousand others. 

And now it seemed to him that the mere fact 
of having accomplished this long-deferred duty, of 
having paid his debt as it were to the dead, had 
broken the last tie to the beloved past. Every- 
thing was more than ever irrevocably ended. 

There were a dinner and ball that evening at 
the English Embassy, at which he was bound to 
appear. It would soon be time to dress. His 


XXXI DISENCHANTED 267 


servant was lighting the lamps and laying out 
his clothes. This, after his visit to the cypress- 
wood with the Turkish ladies in their black 
tcharchafs — what a complete antagonism of 
period, of atmosphere, of ideas ! 

As he turned from the window to go to dress 
he saw snowflakes beginning to fall. It was snow- 
ing out there, on the vast solitude of the graves. 


Next morning he received the letter he had 
begged for from his friends to give him news of 
their safe return. 


4th Ramazan, g in the evening. 


“We reached home safe and _ sound, friend 
André, but not without tribulation. It was very 
late, the last limit of the permitted hour, and then 
one of my companions carelessly cut herself. This 
was explained, but as it is the old ladies of the house 
and the old uncles are suspicious. 

“Thank you with all our hearts for the trust 
you have shown in us. That tomb now in some 
degree belongs to us, does it not? And we shall 
often go to pray there when you have quitted our 
land. 

“This evening I feel you so far from me, and 
yet you are so near! I can see from my 
window, over there on the heights of Pera, the 
lights in the rooms of the Embassy where you are, 
and I wonder how you can bear to amuse yourself 
when we are so sad. You will think me very 
exacting — and so indeed I am, but it is not 
for myself but for er. 


268 DISENCHANTED XXXI 


“You at this moment are gay, no doubt, sur- 
rounded by women and flowers, your mind and 
eyes delighted. And we, in a harem, barely 
lighted, warm but very gloomy, we are weeping. 

“We are weeping for our own life. Ah! how 
dreary and empty it is this evening ! This evening 
more than on other evenings. Is it the feeling 
that you are so near and so remote that makes us 
more miserable? DJENAN.’ 


‘And I, Melek, do you know what I have got 
to say to you? How can you be enjoying your- 
self, when we, before these sprays fallen from a 
cypress tree, are shedding tears? ‘There they lie, 
in a holy box of wood from Mecca; they have a 
sharp damp smell — penetrating, depressing. You 
know, I am sure, from whence we brought them. 

‘Oh! how can you bear to be at a ball this 
evening and forget the sorrows you have created, 
the lives you have marred on your road. I 
cannot conceive that you are not thinking of 
these things, when we, your foreign and far-off 
sisters, are weeping over them. MELEK.’ 


XXXII 


Tuey had warned him that Ramazan would im- 
prison them more closely, by reason of many 
prayers, sacred studies, and the long daily fast; 
and especially of the excitement and bustle of the 
evening, which assumes peculiar importance, dur- 
ing this lenten month; grand dinners are given 
called iftars, to which large parties are invited 
to make up for the abstinence of the day. 

But, on the contrary, Ramazan seemed to 
favour their wildest scheme of all, a scheme to 
shudder at: to receive André Lhéry just once at 
Kassim Pacha, in Djenan’s rooms, two yards away 
from Madame Husnugul! 

Stamboul during the Moslem Lent is unrecog- 
nisable. At night fétes and thousands of lights, 
streets full of people, mosques crowned with 
lamps — huge, luminous rings high up in the air, 
upheld by the minarets which themselves are 
scarcely visible, so nearly do they match the hue 
of the night-sky. On the other hand, all the day 
the world is asleep; the stir of Eastern life comes 
to a standstill, the shops are shut; in the endless 
little coffee-booths, which, as a rule, are never 
empty, no narghilehs, no gossip, only a few 
sleepers stretched on benches, their faces worn by 

269 


270 DISENCHANTED XXXII 


long nights and fasting by day. And in the 
houses, till sundown the same exhaustion as out- 
side. In Dyjenan’s home especially, where the 
servants were as old as their masters, all the 
world slumbered, the beardless negroes, and 
the moustachioed guards with pistols in their 
belts. 

On the 12th of Ramazan, the day fixed for 
this visit, the grandmother and great uncles, con- 
veniently indisposed, kept their rooms, and by 
unhoped-for good-luck Madame Husnugul had 
for two days been confined to bed by indigestion 
brought on by an jftar. 

André was to arrive at two o'clock, to the 
minute, to the second; he was to creep close 
under the wall so as not to be seen from the 
overhanging windows, and not to venture so far 
as the great door unless he saw through a lattice 
on the first floor the corner of a white handker- 
chief — the usual token. 

This time he really was alarmed; alarmed for 
them and alarmed for himself, not of the imme- 
diate danger, but of the universal European scandal 
which would ensue if he were caught in the fact. 
He approached cautiously, keenly on the lookout. 
There were favouring circumstances; there was 
no house opposite that of Djenan, which, like its 
neighbours, looked out over the great cemetery on 
that shore; in front of it was nothing but old 
cypress trees and tombs; no eye could spy them 
from that side, and this wilderness was wrapped 
to-day in November fog. 

The white signal was displayed; no retreat was 


XXXII DISENCHANTED at 


now possible. He went in, like a man flinging 
himself head foremost into an abyss — into a 
monumental vestibule in the old style, empty 
now of its gilt and armed doorkeepers. Only 
Melek, in a black tcharchaf, behind the door, 
who exclaimed with her saucy laugh, ‘Quick! 
quick! Run!’ 

They went upstairs together four steps at a 
time, flew like the wind down the long passages, 
and rushed into Djenan’s room, who awaited them 
with a beating heart and double-locked the door 
on them all. 

Then came a burst of laughter; their school- 
boy laughter, which they flung out as a call of 
defiance to all and each whenever some new peril 
was safely overpast. And Djenan, with a droll 
air of triumph, exhibited the key in her hand; a 
key, a lock! What a revolutionary innovation 
in a harem. She had acquired it yesterday, it 
seemed, and could not get over such a success. 
She and Zeyneb, and even Melek, who hastily re- 
moved her tcharchaf, were paler than usual, a 
consequence of their strict fast. And André saw 
them under an aspect quite new to him, for he 
had never seen them excepting as odalisques, or 
as spectres. They were elegantly dressed as 
very fashionable European ladies; the only detail 
which gave them still an Eastern touch was 
that very small Circassian scarves of white and 
silver gauze covered their hair and fell to their 
shoulders. , 

‘I thought that you wore no veil at all in- 
doors,’ said André. 


272 DISENCHANTED XXXII 


“Yes, yes always. But only these small scarves.’ 

They first took him into the music-room, 
where they found three more ladies invited to 
this dangerous meeting. Mademoiselle Bonneau 
de Saint-Miron, Mademoiselle ‘Tardieu, formerly 
governess to Melek, and a spectre-lady Ubeydeh 
Hanum, diplomée of the Normal College, Pro- 
fessor of Philosophy at the school for girls in a 
town of Asia Minor. Not at all easy were the 
two Frenchwomen, who had for a long time 
hesitated between the temptation and the terrors 
of this visit. Mademoiselle de Saint-Miron, in- 
deed, had quite the appearance of a person who is 
saying to herself: ‘I, alas! was the first cause of 
this preposterous disaster! André Lhéry in my 

upil’s rooms !’ 

They talked, however, for they were dying to 
talk, and it struck André that their minds were 
both lofty and artless — almost old maids as they 
both were. Ladies, too, and very highly educated, 
but excitably romantic, in a way quite out of date 
in 1904. They thought they might venture to 
talk to him of his book, of which they had heard 
the title and which interested them greatly. 

‘Several pages of Désenchantées are already 
written, I suppose ?’ 

‘Dear me, no!’ said he, laughing. ‘Not one.’ 

‘And I am glad of it,’ said Djenan, whose 
voice always surprised André like some super- 
terrestrial music, even after hearing other voices 
that were sweet and low. ‘You will write that 
book when you are gone away; then it will at 
least serve as a bond between us for some months. 


XXXII DISENCHANTED 273 


When: you need some information you will re- 
member to write to us.’ 

André, thinking that he ought out of politeness 
to address some remark to the veiled lady, asked 
her in the most commonplace fashion if she was 
satisfied with the little Asiatic Turks, her girl- 
pupils. He expected some schoolmistress’s reply 
as obvious as his question. But he was little pre- 
pared for what the grave, soft voice said from 
behind the veil, in excellent French. 

“Too well satisfied, alas! They learn only too 
quickly, and are too intelligent. [am sorry to be 
one of the instruments to inoculate these women 
of the future with the microbe of suffering. I 
grieve for all these blossoms, which will fade even 
quicker than their simple-minded grandmothers 
did.’ 

Then they discussed Ramazan. The whole 
day of fasting, spent, of course, in work for the 
poor and pious reading; in the course of this 
lunar month a Moslem woman must read _ her 
Koran through without missing a line, and they 
had no wish to fail in the task, for, in spite of 
subversive and infidel notions, they all venerated 
and admired the sacred Book of Islam, and their 
Korans were there, with green ribbon markers in 
the chapter for the day. 

Then after sunset comes the :ftar. That for 
the men in the selamlik, followed by prayer, for 
which guests, masters, and serving-men meet 
together in the large room, each kneeling on his 
carpet with the mirbab. In this house, it seemed, 


the prayer was chanted every evening by one of 
= 


274 DISENCHANTED XXXII 


the gardeners, the only young man of them all, 
whose sweet, muezzin-like voice filled the house. 

In the harem, the women’s :ftar. 

“These meetings of young Turkish women,’ 
said Zeyneb, ‘rarely become frivolous in Ramazan, 
when mysticism has its sway in the depths of our 
soul; the questions we discuss are those of living 
and dying. We always begin with the same 
ardour, the same eagerness; and always end with 
the same dejection, the same despair, which come 
over us when, after two hours of discussing every 
dogma and every philosophy, we come back to the 
same point and the consciousness of being mere 
feeble, impotent, helpless creatures! Still, hopeis 
so persistent a feeling that, in spite of the failure 
of every effort, we still have energy enough to 
start again on the following day on a new road that 
may lead perhaps to the unapproachable goal.’ 

“We young Turkish women,’ added Melek, 

‘are a handful of the seed of a very evil plant, 
which germinates, survives, and propagates in spite 
of drought and frost, and even of constant cutting 
back.’ 

‘True,’ said Djenan, ‘but we may be divided 
into two species. Those who, to avoid death, 
seize every opportunity of diverting their thoughts 
and forgetting. And those, of finer temper, who 
take refuge in charity, as, for instance, our cousin 
Djavideh; I doubt whether among you the Little 
Sisters of the Poor do more good than she does, or 
with greater self-sacrifice; and there are many in 
our harems who do the same. They are, it is 
true, obliged to do good in secret, and as to 


XXXII DISENCHANTED 275 


forming benevolent associations, that is absolutely 
prohibited, for our masters disapprove of any con- 
tact with the women of the lower orders, for fear 
lest we should inoculate them with our pessimism, 
our eccentricities, and our doubts.’ 

Melek, whose speciality was inconsequent inter- 
ruption, proposed to André to try his hiding-place 
in case of any great alarm; it was in a corner, 
behind an easel draped with brocade and sup- 
porting a picture. ‘An excess of precaution,’ she 
added, ‘for nothing will happen. ‘The only active 
member of the family at this moment is my father, 
and he will not leave Yildiz till gun-fire at the 
hour of Moghreb.’ 

“Well, but after all,’ objected André, ‘if some- 
thing unforeseen should bring him home earlier?’ 

“No one enters a harem unannounced. We 
should tell him that a Turkish lady was paying us 
a Visit, Ubeydeh Hanum, and he would not dream 
of coming across our threshold. As easy as lying 
—if you know how to manage. No, there is 
really nothing to be thought of but your departure 
by and by; that will be a delicate matter.’ 

The piano was strewn with the manuscript 
music of a nocturne Djenan had been compos- 
ing, and André longed to hear her play it, for 
he had never heard her but from a distance when 
passing under her windows at night on the Bos- 
phorus. But in Ramazan they hardly dared to 
have any music, and then, it would be too im- 
prudent to rouse the great sleeping household, 
when their slumbers at this moment were so 
indispensably necessary. 


276 DISENCHANTED XXXII 


Djenan’s great wish was that her friend should 
for once sit down to write at her little writing-table 
—that of her girlhood, on which long ago, when 
he was to her but a figure ina dream, she had 
scribbled her diary while thinking of him. So they 
led him into the large white room where everything 
was luxuriously modern. They made him look 
with them through the ever closed chequered 
lattice of the windows, at the view familiar to 
them from their childhood, and in front of which, 
no doubt, a slow, grey old age would gradually 
extinguish them — cypress-trees and tombstones 
— tombstones of every degree of antiquity; below, 
as at the bottom of a precipice, the Golden Horn, 
dull and grey to-day like a sheet of lead, and 
Stamboul on the other side, drowned in wintry 
mist. He was invited to look, too, through the 
unshuttered windows on the inner side, at the old 
high-walled garden which Djenan had described 
in her letters. ‘A garden so deserted,’ she had 
told him, ‘that I can wander there unveiled. And, 
besides, whenever we go into it our negroes are 
there to warn off the gardeners.’ 

In fact, in the distance, where the plane-trees 
mingled Misir enormous leafless boughs, now for- 
lornly grey, the place looked like an imprisoned 
forest; they certainly might walk there unperceived 
by any living being. 

André blessed the happy audacity which enabled 
him to see, to be acquainted with this home, for- 
bidden to his eyes. Poor little friends of a few 
months, met with so late in his wandering life, and 
from whom he must inevitably part for ever! At 


XXXII DISENCHANTED 277 


any rate, henceforth, whenever he thought of them, 
the scene and setting of their sequestered lives 
would be clear in his memory. 

It was now time for him to leave, the perilous 
hour. Among them André had almost forgotten 
the strangeness of the situation; but now that he 
had to get out again he realised once more that he 
had ventured his skin in a rat-trap, of which the 
passage, when once he was in, had narrowed and 
was beset with spikes. 

They made several rounds of inspection. All 
was well; the only person in the way was a certain 
negro named Yussuf, who persisted in guarding 
the entrance hall. It was necessary to devise for 
him a long and urgent message. 

‘I have it!’ Melek presently exclaimed. ‘Go 
into your hiding-place, André. We will bring him 
into the room, that will crown all!’ 

And when he came in: 

“My good Yussuf,’ said she, ‘I want this mes- 
sage done really in a hurry. Go at once to Pera 
and get us a new book. I will write the name 
on a card; if you must, try every book-shop in the 
high street, but on no account return without 
it: 

And this was what she wrote: ‘ Disenchanted, 
the latest novel by André Lhéry.’ 

One more round of inspection in the passages, 
after sending orders to one and another to employ 
them elsewhere; then, taking André by the hand, 
she dragged him off at a wild run, and rather 
nervously pushed him out. 

He went away, creeping closer than ever under 


278 DISENCHANTED XXXII 


the old walls, and wondering whether the door, 
perhaps too audibly shut, might not open again to 
emit a troop of negroes rushing in pursuit with 
sticks and revolvers. 


The next day they confessed their untruth in 
the matter of the little Circassian veils. They never 
wore them in the house. But to a Moslem woman 
it is even more unseemly to let a man see all her 
hair, and especially the nape of her neck, than to 
show him her face, and they could not make up 
their mind to it. 


XXXII 
DJENAN TO ANDRE 


14th Ramazan 1322 (November 22, 1904). 
‘Our Friend, to-morrow, you know, is Mid- 
Ramazan, and Turkish ladies take an outing. 
Will you come between two and four o’clock to 
the promenade on the Stamboul side, from Bayazid 
to Chazadeh Bacheh? 

“We are very busy just now with our :ftars, but 
we will ere long arrange a fine expedition together 
on the Asiatic shore; the scheme is Melek’s, and 
you will know how well it is planned. DJENAN.’ 


On that morrow the wind was from the south, 
there was bright autumn sunshine and a heady 
sense of warmth and light — perfect weather for 
the veiled fair who have only two or three days 
of such liberty in the year. Their ‘outing,’ of 
course, was in a closed carriage, with an eunuch on 
the box by the driver; but they were allowed to 
draw up the blinds and let down the windows, and 
to remain stationary quite a long time to look at 
others, which on ordinary days is forbidden. 

From Bayazid to Chazadeh Bacheh is a distance 

279 


280 DISENCHANTED XXXIII 


of more than half a mile, in the heart of Stamboul 
and the most Turkish quarter, along old-world 
streets, by colossal mosques and shady gardens of 
the dead, and sacred fountains. In these usually 
silent thoroughfares, ill-suited to modern fashion, 
what an anachronism are these lines of carriages 
meeting there on the day of Mid-Ramazan. In 
hundreds! Coupés and landaus, standing still or 
creeping slowly along; they had come from every 
part of the vast city, even from the palaces built 
on the slopes by the Bosphorus. And in them 
none but women, very much dressed, in yashmaks 
veiling them to the eyes but transparent enough to 
reveal the rest of the face, all the beauties of the 
harems almost visible to-day as an exception, pink 
and white Circassians and pale Turkish brunettes. 
Very few men hung round these open carriage 
windows, and not one European, for across the 
bridges, at Pera, no one ever knows what is going 
on at Stamboul. 

André looked about for his three friends, who, 
it would seem, had dressed themselves very hand- 
somely, to please him; he sought them a long ~ 
time but failed to find them, there was such a 
crowd. At the hour when the ladies all turned 
to go back to the jealous harem, he went away, 
rather disappointed; but after meeting so many 
bright eyes, radiant with the enjoyment of such a 
delightful day, and expressing such artless pleasure 
in having for once in a way been allowed to look 
about them out of doors, he understood better 
than ever before the deadly dulness of their 
cloistered life. 


XXXIV 


THE three sisters knew of a little lonely strand on 
the shore of the sea of Marmora, quite sheltered, 
they said, from the desolating wind of the Bos- 
phorus, and as warm as an orangery. One of 
their friends dwelt in the neighbourhood, and 
undertook to provide a probable alibi by declaring 
stoutly that she had detained them with her all 
day. So they had decided on going there to try 
for a last walk together before the coming separa- 
tion, which might be the fatal, final one. André 
was ere long to take a two months’ holiday in 
France; Djenan was going with her grandmother 
to spend the cold season on her estate at Bounar 
Bashi. They could not meet again till the 
following spring, and between this and then so 
much might happen! 

Sunday, December 12, 1904, the day chosen 
for this excursion, after endless plotting and 
planning, happened again to be one of those days 
of glory which in that uncertain climate come 
suddenly in mid-winter, bringing back the summer 
between two snowstorms. They met on the 
bridge over the Golden Horn, whence the little 
steamers start for the Asiatic shore, in the blaze of 
noon, but without a sign — passers-by that knew 

281 


282 DISENCHANTED XXXIV 


not each other; and as if by chance they took the 
same boat, where, after dismissing their negroes and 
negresses, the three demurely took their seats in 
the harem-cabin reserved for Moslem women. 

The fine sunshine had brought out throngs of 
passengers, going to air themselves on the opposite 
shore. There were above fifty spectre ladies who 
embarked at the same time, and when they reached 
the landing-place at Scutari, André lost himself 
among all the black veils which got off there, and, 
on a false scent, followed three ladies whom he did 
not know; this might have led to a terrible dis- 
aster, but, fortunately, there was something in their 
figures less elegant than his trio of friends, who 
had lingered behind, and in great dismay he left 
them at the first cross-roads and rejoined his three 
friends — the right ladies, this time. 

They hired a carriage for all four, which is 
permissible in the country. He, as the Bey, took 
the best seat, quite contrary to our European 
notions. Djenan was beside him, Zeyneb and 
Melek opposite. And the horses once off at a 
round pace, they laughed with glee under their 
veils at the trick so successfully played, at the 
freedom they had achieved till the evening, at 
their own youth, and the fine weather and deep 
blue sea and sky. They were, in fact, often 
adorably gay and childlike, between their gloomy 
fits; even Zeyneb, who would forget her malady 
and her wish to die. It was with smiling defiance 
that they risked everything — perpetual confine- 
‘ment, exile, or, perhaps, some even severer 
penalty. 


XXXIV DISENCHANTED 283 


As they went on by the shore of Marmora, the 
keen draught down the Bosphorus was less per- 
ceptible. ‘Their little inlet was remote, but bathed 
in tempered air as they had promised, and so 
peaceful in its solitude, so reassuring, so absolutely 
forgotten! It opened due south, and a miniature 
cliff encircled it like a screen made on purpose. 
On the fine sand they felt themselves at home, 
sheltered from prying eyes as effectually as in the 
walied garden of a harem. Nothing could be seen 
but the sea of Marmora without a wrinkle, not a 
ship in sight, and beyond, on the further horizon, 
the outline of the mountains of Asia. Marmora 
as absolutely still as on the fine calm days of 
September, but perhaps too pallidly blue, for its 
sheen, in spite of the sun, had the sadness of 
winter; it was like a pool of melted silver slowly 
cooling. And the distant mountains yonder had 
already caps of dazzling snow. 

As they mounted the little cliff they saw no 
living soul, nor.on the bare and desolate plain all 
round. So all three, raising their veils as high as 
their hair, drew deep breaths of fresh air; never 
till now had André seen their young faces, a little 
colourless, in the sunshine and free air; never 
before had they felt themselves in such perfect 
security together — in spite of the mad risk of the 
expedition, and the dangers of their return in the 
evening. 

First of all they sat down on the ground to 
eat some bonbons bought of the fashionable 
confectioner in Stamboul. And then they pried 
into every nook of the pretty little bay, their 


284. DISENCHANTED XXXIV 


secret shelter for this afternoon. A wonderful 
combination of circumstances, determination, and 
audacity had met to this end — in this unusually 
sunny December day, almost ominous by dint of 
being so lovely, and furtively slipped in between 
two days of Russian wind —to bring together 
visitors from such dissimilar worlds, whose origin 
would have seemed to decree that they should 
never meet. André, as he looked at the eyes and 
mouth of Djenan, who was to start the next day 
but one to go to her palace in Macedonia, under- 
stood how much this hour held that was rare and 
irrecoverable: the impossibilities that had been 
overcome before they could meet here by the pale 
wintry sea would be the same again to-morrow and 
for ever. Who could tell? ‘They might even never 
meet again, at any rate in such security and with 
such a light heart. It was an hour in a lifetime, 
to be remembered, graven, preserved as far as was 
possible from being ever forgotten. 

They took it in turn to go to the top of the 
little cliff and signal any danger from afar. And 
once the sentinel, who happened to be Zeyneb, 
announced the approach of a Turk along the shore, 
also accompanied by three ladies with their veils 
up. They thought there was no danger here, and 
that they might risk the encounter, only they, too, 
dropped the black gauze over their faces. When 
the Turk passed, no doubt some genuine Bey with 
the ladies of his harem, his ladies also dropped 
their veils before André; but the two men looked 
carelessly at each other without suspicion on either 
part; the new-comer had at once supposed the 


XXXIV DISENCHANTED 285 


party he found in the bay to be all members of 
one family. 

Some flat pebbles, that might have been 
made on purpose, laid by the quiet waters in a 
neat line on the sand, suddenly reminded André 
of a game of his childhood; he showed his three 
friends how to throw them in such a way as to jump 
again from the glassy surface of the sea, and they 
set to work eagerly at playing ‘ducks and drakes,’ 
but without success. Ah! how childlike and 
merry and simple they were that day, these com- 
plicated little souls! Especially Djenan, who had 
been at such pains to ruin her life. 

After this unique hour they went back to the 
carriage, which was waiting a long way off, to go 
back to Scutari. Then on the boat they were of 
course strangers. But during the short passage 
they saw once more the wondrous vision of Stam- 
boul in the light of a glowing evening. Stamboul 
seen in front of them and in perspective; first the 
ferocious battlemented ramparts of the old Seraglio, 
its base bathed in the rose-tinted silver of the sea 
of Marmora; then, higher up, the maze of cupo- 
las and minarets against a different rose colour. 
A wintry rose too, but less silvery, less pallid, 
. than that of the sea, and golden rather than pink. 


XXXV 
DJENAN TO ANDRE THE FOLLOWING DAY 


“SAFE! once more safe! We had dreadful difficul- 
ties on our return home, but now the household 
has calmed down. Did you notice how beautiful 
our Stamboul looked as you arrived? 

“To-day rain and melting snow beat on our 
windows, the icy blast pipes a doleful tune under 
the doors. How unlucky it would have been if 
this weather had burst upon us yesterday. Now 
that our expedition is well over, and we remember 
it as a beautiful dream, all the tempests of the 
Black Sea may rave. 

“André, we shall not meet again before I leave; 
circumstances will not allow of our arranging for 
another meeting in Stamboul. So I am bidding 
you farewell, probably till the spring. But would 
you do one thing I ask of you asa favour? A 
month hence, when you are going to France, since 
you intend to travel by steamer, take a fez with 
you, and choose the Salonica route. The vessel 
stops there for some hours, and I know of a way of 
meeting you there. One of my negroes will go 
on board and give you your instructions. Do not 
refuse me this. 

286 


XXXV DISENCHANTED 287 


“All happiness go with you, André, to your own 
land. DJENAN.’ 


After Djenan’s departure, André remained five 
weeks at Constantinople, where he again saw 
Zeyneb and Melek. When the day came for 
him to start on his two months’ holiday, he went 
by the line she had suggested, taking his fez; but 
at Salonica no negro made his appearance on board 
the vessel. The stay there was to him but a sad 
one, being disappointed in this hope — by reason, 
too, of the memory of Nedjibeh, which still 
haunted this town, and the barren surrounding 
mountains. And he had to leave without any 
news of his more recent friend. _ 


A few days after arriving in France he received 
this letter from Djenan: 


Bounar BasHI, near SALONICA, 
January 10, 1905. 

“When and by whom shall I ever get this 
letter posted, watched as I am here? 
- ©You are far away, and who knows when you 
will return? My cousins told me of your meeting 
and parting, and how sad they have been since you 
left. What a strange thing it seems, André, 
when you think of it, that there should be beings 
whose fate it is to drag sorrow wherever they go; 
a sorrow that casts its shadow on all who come 
near them. You are one of them, and it is no 
fault of yours. You suffer infinitely complicated 
griefs — or are they infinitely simple? But you 


288 DISENCHANTED XXXV 


suffer; the suspension of your soul is always 
resolved into a chord of pain. Those who come 
into contact with you hate you or love you. And 
those who love you suffer with you, through you, 
for you. You have this year been a sunbeam in 
the life of your little friends at Constantinople — a 
transient gleam, but that they knew beforehand. 
And now they are wretched in the darkness that 
has again closed round them. 

‘For my part, perhaps, I may tell you some 
day what you have been to me. My anguish is 
not so much because you are gone, as because | 
ever met you. 

“You were annoyed with me, I daresay, for not 
having arranged a meeting when you stopped 
at Salonica. ‘The thing would, in fact, have been 
possible in this country, which is still as deserted as 
in your Nedjibeh’s day. We might have had ten 
minutes to ourselves, to exchange a few parting 
words and grasp each other’s hand. My grief, 
indeed, would not have been comforted, on the 
contrary; for reasons of my own I| kept away. 
But it was no fear of danger that hindered me. 
No, far from it! If, to go to you, I had known 
that Death lay in ambush for me on my way back, 
I should have felt no hesitation or anxiety; I 
should have gone to you, André, to bid you my 
heart’s farewell as my heart would bid me speak 
it. We Turkish women of to-day do not fear 
death. Does not love drive us to death? When 
has love ever meant life to us? DJENAN.’ 


And Melek, to whom this letter was sent to be 


XXXV DISENCHANTED 289 


forwarded to France, added a few reflections 
which had occurred to her. 


‘By long thinking of you, our friend, I am 
sure I have discovered some of the causes of your 
sorrows. Oh, I know you by this time, believe 
me. In the first place, you want everything to 
last for ever, and never wholly enjoy anything 
because you are telling yourself “this must end.” 
Besides, life has given you so much, you have 
had so many good things, so many things, one of 
which would suffice to make any one else happy, 
that you have let them go because you had too 
much. Your greatest woe is that too many 
women have loved you and have told you so too 
often; it has been too much impressed on you 
that you were indispensable to the lives in which 
you have played a part; you have too constantly 
been met on the threshold; you have never had 
to make one step in advance on the road of 
feeling; you have always sat still and waited! 
And now you feel emptiness in and about you, 
because you yourself do not love, you only let 
yourself be loved. Believe me, love some one in 
your turn, never mind whom of your innumer- 
able adorers, and you will see, you will be cured. 

*MELEK.’ 


Djenan’s letter did not satisfy André; he did 
not think it spontaneous enough. ‘If her affec- 
tion were so deep,’ though he, ‘she would have 
wished above everything, and in spite of every- 


thing, to say good-bye to me, either at Stamboul 
U 


290 DISENCHANTED XXXV 


or at Salonica. This letter is “literature.”’ He 
was disappointed in her, his trust in her was 
shaken, and that tortured him. He forgot that 
she was an Oriental, more effusive than an Euro- 
pean and far more inscrutable. 

He was tempted, in replying, to treat her as a 
child, as he sometimes did: ‘A being who drags 
sorrow after him.” I, then, am the very “man 
of destiny” whom you declared to be out of date 
since 1830.’ But he feared to go too far, and 
answered quite seriously, telling her that she had 
wounded him deeply by allowing him to depart 
thus. 

No direct communication was possible with her 
at Bounar Bashi, in the Palace of the Sleeping 
Beauty; everything must be sent via Stamboul 
through the hands of Zeyneb or Melek, to say 
nothing of other accomplices. 

At the end of three weeks he received these few 
lines enclosed by Zeyneb. 


‘André, how can I wound you by anything 
I can do or say —I who am nothing as com- 
pared with you? Do you not know that all my 
thoughts, all my affection, are but a humble tribute 
that you can trample underfoot; a long-worn 
carpet, still pleasing in design, on which your feet 
may tread. This is all I am; and can you be 
angry or offended with me? DJENAN.” 


Here she was purely oriental, and André, 
charmed and touched, wrote to her at once, and 
this time in a burst of sweet affection — all the 


XXXV DISENCHANTED 291 


more so because Zeyneb had added: ‘Djenan is 
ill of a nervous fever which makes our grand- 
mother anxious, and the doctor does not know 
* what to think of it.’ 

Some weeks later Djenan replied in a little 
note, very short, and as Eastern as the last: 


Bounar Basui, February 21, 1905. 

‘I have for many days been asking myself, 
“Where is the remedy that will cure me?” The 
remedy has come, and my eyes, which have been 
growing too large, devoured it. My poor thin 
fingers now hold it, and I thank you. Thank you 
for the gift of a little of yourself, for the alms of 
your thoughts. Bless you for the peace your 
second letter has brought me. 

‘I wish you happiness, my friend, in return for 
the moment of joy you have just bestowed on me. 
I wish you happiness, sweet and perfect happiness, 
that may bring joy to your life like a garden of 
fragrance, like a bright summer morning. 

“DJENAN.’ 


Ill and worn by fever, the poor secluded 
creature had gone back to her old self on the 
plain of Karadjemir, had become a child again. 
And under this aspect, antecedent to the remark- 
able culture of which she was so proud, André 
loved her more than ever. 

This time again there was a postscript by 
Melek to Djenan’s note. After reproaching him 
for the rarity of his always too brief letters, she 


said: 


292 DISENCHANTED XXXV 


“We admire your busy-ness, and would ask you 
how we can set to work to be busy too, absorbed, 
overworked, hindered from writing to our friends. 
Teach us how, if you please. We, on the con- 
trary, have all the day to write in, for our sins 
and your misfortune. MELEK.’ 


When, his leave at an end, André returned 
to Turkey early in the month of March, 1905, 
Stamboul was still wrapped in a mantle of snow, 
but the day he arrived was exquisitely blue. 
Thousands of gulls and terns: whirled round the 
vessel he was in. The Bosphorus was covered 
with the white birds, like a sort of snow in very 
large flakes; crazy, numberless birds, a cloud of 
white plumage fluttering in front of a white city, a 
marvellous winter scene with the glory of Southern 
sunshine. 

Zeyneb and Melek, knowing by what boat he 
was to arrive, sent him their Se/ams of welcome by 
a negro the same evening, and at the same time a 
long letter from Djenan, who was well again, they 
told him, but would stay for some time yet in her 
remote old palace. 

Now she had recovered, the little barbarian of 
Karadjemir was wilful and complicated once more, 
no longer by any means the thing of nought which 
her friend might ‘trample underfoot.’ Oh, no! 
She wrote now in a key of rebellion and anger. 
In fact, there had already been a good deal of 
talk, behind the lattices of many a harem, about the 
book André was to write; a young woman, whom 
he had scarcely seen, and only under the thickest 


XXXV DISENCHANTED 2.93 


of black veils, had boasted, so it was said, of being 
a friend of his and the chief inspirer of the intended 
work; and Djenan, cloistered so far away, was 
raging with rather savage jealousy. 


‘André, can you understand what a fury of 
impotence comes over us when we fancy that any 
one can creep in between you and us? And it is 
still worse when the rivalry encroaches on what is 
our special domain: your memories and impres- 
sions of the East. Do you not know, or do you 
forget, that we staked our lives, to say nothing of 
our peace, solely to give you such impressions of 
our country in full completeness; for it was not 
even to win your heart; that, we knew, was weary 
and closed; no, it was to inspire your sensibility 
as an artist, and set before it, if we may so express 
it, a sort of half-real dream. To achieve this, 
which seemed possible, and to show you what 
without us you could only have imagined, we took 
the risk, with our eyes open, of planting in our 
own souls eternal grief and regret. Do you think 
that many Europeans would have done as much? 

“There are times when it is torture to think 
that other thoughts will come to you that will 
drive away your memories of us, that other 
impressions will be dearer to you than those of our 
Turkey, seen with us and through our eyes. And 
what | want is that when you have finished this 
book you should never write another, that you 
should think no more, that your hard, bright eyes 
should never soften for any other woman. When 
life is too unbearable I tell myself that it will not 


2.94 DISENCHANTED XXXV 


last long; and then, if it is possible for souls in 
freedom to influence the living, my soul will take 
possession of yours and draw it to itself, so that 
wherever I may be yours will have to come. 

‘I would give all of my life that remains to me 
to read your heart for ten minutes. I long to 
have the power to make you suffer — and to know 
it; yes, I, who a few months ago would have 
given that life to make you happy. 

‘Good God! André, are you so rich in friend- 
ship that you waste it so? Is it generous to inflict 
such misery on one who loves you, and who loves 
you from so far, with such disinterested devotion ? 
Do not foolishly destroy an affection which, even 
if it is a little jealous and exacting, is nevertheless 
the truest perhaps and the deepest you have in- 
spired in all your life. DJENAN.’ 


André was greatly disturbed by this letter. 
The reproaches were childish and inconsistent, 
since he had no friends among Turkish women 
but those three. But the whole tone of it jarred. 
“There is no mistake this time,’ he said to himself. 
‘This is really a wrong note, a crashing discord in 
the harmony of sisterly friendships which I so 
perversely persuaded myself was indestructible. 
Poor little Djenan! But is it possible ?’ 

He tried to understand the new situation, which 
seemed to him insolvable. ‘It cannot be,’ said he 
to himself; ‘it shall never be, because I will not 
have it. So much for my share in it; so far as I 
am concerned the matter is settled.’ And when a 
decision is thus formulated it is a great protection 


XXXV DISENCHANTED 295 


against agitating thoughts and seductive lan- 
guishing. 

Not that there was any great merit in such a 
decision, for he was perfectly convinced that 
Djenan, even if she loved him, would always be 
inaccessible. He knew the little being who was 
at once confiding and reserved, audacious and 
immaculate; she was capable of surrendering her 
soul from a distance to a friend who, as she 
thought, would never deviate from the part of an 
elder brother; but she would certainly veil 
her face for ever, and remain irrevocably lost, at 
the mere hint of a lingering or agitated grasp of 
her hand. 

The adventure was none the less sinister; and 
certain phrases formerly spoken by her, which at 
the moment had hardly struck him, recurred to 
his mind with ominous resonance: ‘The love of a 
Moslem woman for a foreigner can have no issue 
but in flight or in death.’ 


Next day, however, in lovely weather, already 
almost spring, things looked altogether less serious. 
As before, he reflected that this letter was ‘litera- 
ture,’ probably to no small extent, and above all 
full of oriental exaggeration. But, in fact, for 
some years past, a woman, to convince him that 
she loved him, had to prove it by substantial 
evidence, so perpetually present to him was the 
sum of his years — a cruel obsession. 

His heart was lighter than it had been yester- 
day, and he went off in better spirits to Stamboul, 
where Zeyneb and Melek, whom he longed to see 


296 DISENCHANTED XXXV 


again, awaited him at Sultan Selim. Stamboul, 
always differently magnificent at a distance, was 
on that day a pitiable spectacle seen close at hand, 
in the damp and mud of the rapid thaw; and in 
the blind alley where stood the house of their 
meetings, there were still patches of snow in the 
shade under the wall. 

They received him with their veils raised in the 
humble little harem, where it was very cold, and 
they were eager and affectionate, as to an older 
brother returned from a foreign journey. But he 
was at once struck by their altered appearance. 
Zeyneb’s face, still exquisitely refined and chiselled, 
had a waxen pallor, her eyes were larger, and her 
lips colourless; the winter, which had been excep- 
tionally severe, had no doubt aggravated the 
malady she scorned to nurse. As to Melek, pale 
too, with an anxious furrow on her brow, she was 
evidently concentrated, almost tragical, suddenly 
matured and ready for a supreme effort of rebellion. 
“They want to make me marry again!’ she said 
bitterly, without another word in reply to the 
wordless questions she read in André’s eyes. 

‘And you?’ he asked Zeyneb. 

‘I? Oh, I have my deliverance under my 
hand,’ she replied, touching her chest, shaken now 
and then by an ominous little cough. 

Both were much excited about Djenan’s letter, 
which had passed through their hands only the day 
before, and which had been sealed, an unprece- 
dented thing among them, for they had never had 
any secrets. 

“What can she have had to say to you?’ 


XXXV DISENCHANTED 297 


‘Oh, nothing. Childish reproaches. Some 
absurd harem gossip which had upset her without 
reason.’ 

‘Ah, this new talk of some one who has 
inspired your book, who has risen up apart from 
us ?’ 

‘Exactly that. And it is absolutely without | 
foundation, I assure you, for besides you three, 
and one or two veiled figures to whom you your- 
selves introduced me 

“We never believed it, my sister and I. But 
so far away from everything, in such seclusion — 
what can you expect? Your brain works 

“And hers has worked so effectually that she is 
seriously vexed with me.’ 

“It is not a deadly hatred, at any rate,’ Melek 
put in. “At least it would not seem so. See 
here, what she wrote to me this morning.’ And 
she held out part of a letter, after folding back 
the lower portion, which, no doubt, he was not to 
read. 








“Tell him I constantly think of him, and to 
remember him is the only joy in my life. I envy 
you every minute you spend with him and all of 
his presence he bestows on you; I envy you for 
being so near him, for seeing his face, for grasping 
his hand. Do not forget me when you are 
together; I demand my share of your meetings 
and your risks.’ 


‘Certainly,’ he said, returning the folded letter, 
‘that does not look like mortal hatred.’ 


2098 DISENCHANTED XXXV 


He did his best to speak lightly, but these few 
phrases shown to him by Melek, left him more sure 
and more disturbed than the long and vehement 
letter addressed to himself. There was no ‘litera- 
ture’ here — it was perfectly simple and perfectly 
clear! How innocently she had written these 
transparent sentences to her cousins, after taking 
the trouble to seal so carefully her impassioned 
reproaches to him. 

So this was the turn taken quite against his 
expectations by the curious, calm friendship of 
last year, with three women who were for ever to 
be an inseparable trinity, ‘one soul’ and ‘for ever 
featureless.’ The outcome terrified him, but it 
fascinated him too; at that moment he was quite 
incapable of deciding whether he was glad or not 
that it should be so. 

“When is she to return?’ he asked. 

“At the beginning of May,’ said Zeyneb. ‘We 
are going to spend the summer as we did last year 
in our yali on the Asiatic shore. Our modest 
scheme is to enjoy a last summer together, if the 
despotism of our masters does not divide us by a 
marriage before the autumn. I say last, because, 
so far as I am concerned, next winter will no doubt 
carry me off, and in any case the other two will be 
married again before next summer.’ 

“As for that, we shall see!’ exclaimed Melek, 
with gloomy defiance. 

For André also this would be the last summer 
on the Bosphorus. His appointment at the 
Embassy would end in November, and he had 
made up his mind to follow the leading of destiny, 


XXXV DISENCHANTED 2.99 


partly out of fatalism, and also because there are 
things which it is folly to insist on prolonging, 
particularly when the issue can only be disastrous 
or criminal. So he looked forward with deep 
melancholy to the return of thesummer, soenchant- 
ing on the Bosphorus, where the light caiques carry 
one over the blue water, along the two shores with 
their latticed houses, or up to the valley of the 
Grand Signior and among the hills on the coast of 
Asia carpeted with pink heath. This was all to 
return for one supreme season, but only to end 
without any hope for the future. Over his meet- 
ings with his three friends there would hang, as 
before, the perpetual dread of spies or of treachery, 
which might in an instant part them for ever; and 
added to this the certainty that they fould not 
meet in the following year would be ever present 
to give increased pathos to the flight of the fine 
days in August and September, the blossoming of 
the autumn colchicum, the yellow shower of falling 
leaves, the first October rains. And over all there 
would hang this new and unforeseen element: 
Djenan’s love for him, which, though only covertly 
avowed, nay, suppressed as she could suppress it 
with her small iron hand, could not fail to make 
the close of this Eastern dream more breathless 
and more cruel. 


XXXVI 


Axsout the roth of April André’s French servant, 
when he called him in the morning, announced in 
a gleeful voice, as an event sure to please him: 

“I have seen two swallows! Oh, and they were 
piping — piping!’ 

The swallows were already in Constantinople! 
And what a hot sun was pouring in at the windows 
that morning! Why, the days certainly flew 
faster even than of old. Spring already here; 
already cut into instead of being in reserve for the 
future as André had been able to fancy only 
yesterday, in gloomy weather before the swallows 
had been seen. And the summer, which would 
be here to-morrow, immediately, would be the 
last, irrevocably the last of his life in the East — the 
last, too, no doubt, of his spuriously renewed 
youth. Back to Turkey by and by, in the grey 
twilight of his declining years, perhaps. But after 
all for what? When one comes back, what does 
one retrieve of oneself and of what one has loved? 
How disappointing a venture is such a return 
when all else is changed or dead. ‘Besides,’ 
thought he, ‘when I shall have written the book 
for which these poor little things have extorted a 
promise, shall I not have closed this country 

300 


XXXVI DISENCHANTED 301 


against myself for ever; shall I not have lost the 
confidence of my friends the Turks and the rights 
of a citizen in my beloved Stamboul ?’ 


The month of April sped like a single day. 
André spent it in pilgrimages to Stamboul, in 
dreams and long visits to Eyoub or to Sultan 
Selim, in narghilehs smoked out of doors in spite 
of uncertain weather, with spells of cold and wind 
off the snows. 

The first of May came, and still Djenan said 
nothing of leaving her inaccessible old castle. She 
wrote less often than she had done last year, and 
her letters were shorter. ‘Forgive my silence,’ 
she wrote once. ‘Try to understand it; it means 
so much.’ 

Still Zeyneb and Melek said she would come, 
and seemed very sure of it. André saw less of 
this pair than before; one was slowly giving up 
life; the other was less evenly sweet, under the 
threat of a second marriage. Again, surveillance 
was stricter this year, over all women in general — 
and perhaps more especially over these two, who 
were suspected, as yet very vaguely, of illicit 
coming and going. They wrote often to their 
friend, who, though he was very fond of them, 
generally contented himself with replying in the 
spirit, with good intentions only. And then they 
would reproach him — with much diffidence. 


Kassim, Pacua, May 8, 1905. 


“Dear Friend, what is the matter? We are 
uneasy —we your poor, humble, distant little 


302 DISENCHANTED XXXVI 


friends. When days go by without a letter from 
you a heavy cloak of sadness crushes our shoulders, 
and everything is dismal, the sea and the sky and 
our hearts within us. 

‘Still, we do not complain, I assure you, and 
this is only to tell you once more a very old story 
that you know full well — that you are our great 
and only friend. 

‘Are you happy just now? Are your days 
strewn with flowers ? 

“Time flies or lingers according to what life 
brings us. For us it dawdles indeed. Really, I 
cannot see what we are here in the world for. 
Perhaps, indeed, for the sole joy of being your 
very devoted slaves, faithful till death and beyond 
it. ZEYNEB AND MELEK.’ 


Already the 8th of May. He read this letter 
at his window in the warm twilight, which invited 
him to linger there in front of the vast expanse of 
distance and sky. In his rooms Pera could really 
be ignored; the turbulent high street was far 
away; he looked down a wood of fragrant cypress 
trees which is enclosed in the town and known as 
the Little Field of the Dead; and the domes of 
Stamboul stood up in front, on the horizon. 

Night came down on Turkey, a moonless night 
but bright with stars. Stamboul in the darkness 
draped itself in magnificence and came out, as it 
does every night, in lordly shadowy outline against 
the sky. The clamour of the dogs, the thud of 
the watchman’s iron-shod staff began to be heard 
in the silence. And then it was the appointed 


XXXVI DISENCHANTED 303 


hour for the muezzins, and from every part of the 
phantasmal city rose the usual symphony of minor 
chants, high-pitched, light, and pure, winged like 
prayer itself. 

The first night this of summer, a night of real 
glow and enchantment. André at his window 
hailed it with less joy than melancholy; his last 
summer had begun. 

At the Embassy, on the following day, he heard 
that the move to Therapia was to take place soon. 
To him this meant the final departure from Con- 
stantinople, since he would return for only a few 
sad days at the end of the season, before finally 
leaving Turkey. 

Turks and Levantines, too, were already busy 
preparing for the annual migrationto the Bosphorus 
or the Islands. Houses were being opened all 
along the Strait on both the European and the 
Asiatic shores. Eunuchs were rushing to and fro 
on the stone or marble landing-quays, making 
ready for their mistresses’ summer stay, bringing, 
in gaudy gilded caiques, hangings of silk, mattresses 
for divans, and embroidered SHOE. Yes, it 
was the summer, come upon André more quickly 
than of yore, he thought, and fated certainly to 
end more quickly still, since spans of time seem 
to diminish more rapidly in length as we advance 
in years, 


XXXVII 


Tue first of the lovely month of June! May had 
slipped away in no time; still Djenan had not 
come back, and her letters, now always short, gave 
no explanation. 

The first of the lovely month of June. André, 
who had his old rooms in Therapia, on the edge 
of the water, looking up to the opening into the 
Black Sea, woke to the splendour of the morning, 
his heart gripped at the mere idea of its being 
June. Just the change of date gave him the sense 
of a long stride forward towards the end. Indeed, 
his incurable malady, which was his distress at the 
flight of the days, never failed to be more acute in 
the extra-lucid moments of awakening. What he 
now felt slipping away from him was the Eastern 
spring, which went to his head as it was wont to 
do when he was young, and which he would never, 
never see again. And he reflected: ‘All this 
will end to-morrow, this sun will be extinct for 
me to-morrow; my hours are strictly numbered 
till old age comes and annihilation.’ 

But when he was fully awake, as usual his 
thoughts went back to the thousand pleasing and 
amusing things that come into daily life, the 
thousand little delusions that help us to forget the 

304 


XXXVI DISENCHANTED 305 


march of time, and death. In the first place it 
was the valley of the Grand Signior which rose 
before his mind; it was over there, opposite, 
behind the wooded hills of the Asiatic shore which 
he saw every morning as soon as he had opened 
his eyes. He would go this afternoon and sit 
there as he had done last year, in the shade of the 
plane-trees to smoke a narghileh, while he watched 
from afar the veiled ladies who wandered there 
like Elysian shades. Then he gave his attention 
to his new caique; his man told him it had just 
been brought up from Stamboul under his windows, 
fresh in its new gilding, and that the rowers begged 
to try on their new livery. For this last summer 
in the East he wished to be seen in a fine equipage 
on Fridays at the Sweet Waters, and he had devised 
a quite oriental combination of colours; the oars- 
men’s jackets and the long trailing carpet were to 
be in dark orange velvet embroidered with gold, 
and on this carpet the servant who squatted quite 
at the end of the slender prow was to wear sky- 
blue embroidered in silver. When the men were 
dressed in their new splendour, he went down to 
see the effect on the water. At this moment the 
surface was a scarcely heaving mirror — this water 
of the Bosphorus generally rather broken. ‘There 
was infinite peace in the air, the joy of the morn- 
ing and of June in the verdure on either shore. 
André was satisfied with the trial, his eye was 
pleased by the contrast between the blue and silver 
figure and the orange velvet on which he squatted 
—the design on the carpet formed the words of 
an old Arabic poem setting forth the perfidy of 


x 


306 DISENCHANTED XXXVII 


love. And then he stretched himself in the 
caique to be rowed over to the Asiatic shore before 
the heat of the midday sun. 

That evening he had a note from Zeyneb 
appointing a meeting for the next day at the 
Sweet Waters — only to pass each other in their 
caiques, of course. Dangers were increasing, she 
said. The watchers were doubled; they had now 
been forbidden to take exercise along the shore as 
they had done last year, rowing themselves, in 
muslin veils. At the same time, there was never 
a bitter word in Zeyneb’s complaints; she was too 
gentle to be vexed, besides being too weary; and 
so resigned to everything, in her certainty of the 
merciful and approaching death she had welcomed 
to her bosom. In a postscript she added that poor 
old Mevlut, an Ethiopian eunuch, had just died 
in his eighty-third year, and that this was a real 
misfortune, for he loved them, having known them 
from childhood, and would never have betrayed 
them for silver nor gold. They, too, loved him 
truly; he was like one of the family. ‘We 
nursed him,’ she wrote; ‘nursed him like a 
grandfather,’ but the last word had been erased, 
and above it in Melek’s pert writing was inserted 
‘grand uncle!’ 

Friday came, so he went to the Sweet Waters, 
for the first time that year, in his boat of more 
conspicuous colours than those of the past season. 
He passed and repassed his two friends, who had 
also changed the colour of their livery from blue 
to green and gold; they both wore the black 
tcharchaf, and a semi-transparent veil, pulled down 


XXXVII DISENCHANTED 307 


over the face. Other ladies of fashion, also veiled 
with black, turned their heads to look after him, 
ladies who went by lying as it seemed almost on 
the water, which was crowded with similar enig- 
matical figures between the shores fringed with 
ferns and flowers; almost all these shrouded ladies, 
interested in him from having read his books, 
knew him by sight, having had him pointed out 
to them by others. With some he had perhaps 
spoken during the previous autumn, without see- 
ing their faces, in his adventurous meetings with 
his friends. He caught an attentive glance now 
and again, or a faint smile scarcely perceptible 
under a black veil. And they perhaps approved 
of the combination of colours he had devised, 
which glided over the green stream — a blaze of 
orange and hydrangea blue between the emerald 
banks and the shady screens of trees, and were 
sympathetically surprised at an European who thus 
showed himself so purely oriental. 

And he, still at times such a child, was 
amused by attracting the attention of these un- 
recognisable fair ones, at having possibly haunted 
their thoughts by the influence of his books, which 
were now being widely read in the harems. The 
June sky was exquisitely calm and deep. The 
spectators in white veils, who watched as they sat 
in groups on the grassy banks, showed large calm 
eyes above the folds of muslin. There was a 
sweet smell of hay mingling with that of the 
narghilehs that were being smoked in the shade. 
And the summer, he knew, would last for three 
months yet, and the season of the Sweet Waters 


308 DISENCHANTED XX XVII 


was but just beginning; so there were still many 
Fridays to come, and everything would really 
endure for some little time and not all come to 
an end to-morrow. 

When André left his gay boat for a while 
among the reeds, to smoke a narghileh himself 
under the trees, and play the part of spectator in 
his turn, watching the caiques as they glided over 
the water, he felt once more the illusion of youth, 
the intoxication of forgetting. 


XXXVITI 


A LETTER from Djenan to André the following 
week. 
Fune 22, 1905. 


“Here I am once more by the Bosphorus, 
André, as I promised you, and I am really longing 
to see you. Will you come to Stamboul on 
Thursday, and be at Sultan Selim at about two 
o’clock in my nurse’s house? I would rather see 
you there than at my friend’s at Sultan Fatih, be- 
cause it was the scene of our first meetings. 

“Wear your fez, of course, and take the same 
precautions as before, but do not come in unless 
our usual signal, the corner of a white handker- 
chief, appears through one of the lattices on the 
first floor. Otherwise the chance will be lost, 
and probably, alas, for a long time; in that case 
walk on to the end of the alley and turn back as 
if you had missed your way. 

‘Everything is much more difficult this year, 
and we live in constant alarms. — Your friend, 

“DJENAN.’ 


On that Thursday when he awoke he was 
more than ever disturbed about his appearance. 
309 


310 DISENCHANTED XXXVIII 


‘I must have grown much older,’ said he to him- 
self, ‘since last year; there are silver threads in 
my moustache which were not there when she 
went away.’ He would have given much never 
to have disturbed his friend’s peace of mind, but 
the thought that he might fall off personally in 
her eyes was nevertheless intolerable. 

Men such as he, who might have been great 
mystics but that they failed to find anywhere the 
light they so earnestly sought, fall back with all 
the disappointed ardour of their souls on love and 
youthfulness, and cling to them desperately when 
they feel them slipping from them. And then 
begins childish and pitiable despair, when they see 
their hair turn white and their eyes grow dull, and 
they look forward in heart-broken dread to the 
moment when women will look away at other 
men. 

That Thursday came, and André made his way 
through the fascinating desolation of old Stamboul 
under the sweet June sky to Sultan Selim, dreading 
to see her and even more to be seen by her. 

On reaching the dismal little street and looking 
up, he at once saw the guiding speck of white 
against the dark brown and ochre of the houses; 
and behind the door Melek was on the watch. 

“Are they here ?’ he asked. 

‘Yes, both of them; they are waiting for 

ou.’ 
: At the door of the harem stood Zeyneb, her 
face uncovered, more faded and wasted than ever. 

At the end, in the shadow, was Djenan, who 
came to meet him with spontaneous eagerness like 


X XXVIII DISENCHANTED 311 


a girl, and gave him her hand. Yes, it was she; 
he heard once more her voice like distant music. 
But the deep-sea eyes, where were they? The 
eyebrows with their pathetic slant like those of 
Our Lady of Sorrows, the oval face? nothing 
could he see. The veil had fallen over them all 
as impenetrable as in the early days. Seized with 
horror at having gone too far the little white 
princess had retired into her ivory tower. And 
at once André understood that no entreaty would 
avail, that the veil would never again be lifted — 
unless perhaps in some tragical and supreme 
moment. He felt that the stage of freedom and 
sweetness was past in this doubly forbidden affec- 
tion. Thenceforward they would move on to the 
inevitable catastrophe. 


XXXIX 


STILL a few days of apparent calm were to be 
allotted to them. 

July passed, it is true, without their being able 
to meet again, even at a distance, at the Sweet 
Waters. July is, at Constantinople, a month of 
wind and storms, a time when the Bosphorus is 
lashed from morning till night into white foam. 
All through that month Djenan could hardly write 
to him, so closely was she guarded by a cross- 
grained old aunt, who had come from Erivan to 
pay her an interminable visit, and who could not 
bear to go out in a caique unless the water was as 
smooth as a mirror. 

But this lady, called by André and his three 
friends ‘Plague Hanum,’ took herself off early in 
August, and the end of the summer, their last 
summer, was no longer spoilt for them. August, 
September, and October are the delightful season 
on the Bosphorus, when the sky is as clear as in 
Eden, and the days, as they shorten, grow calmer 
and more sober, but lose nothing of their splendour. 

Once more they frequented the Sweet Waters 
of Asia, and plotted meetings at Stamboul in the 
house near Sultan Selim. Superficially everything 
was the same again as in the summer of 1904, 

312 


XXXIX DISENCHANTED 313 


even to the black veil perpetually shrouding 
Djenan’s face; but in their souls there were 
different feelings, thoughts as yet unspoken, of 
which they were not yet sure, but which, neverthe- 
less, led to moments of oppressive silence in the 
midst of their talk. 

Besides, the year before they could say: “We 
have another summer tolook forward to.’ Whereas 
now everything was coming to an end, since André 
was leaving Turkey in November; and they con- 
stantly thought of the approaching separation, which 
seemed to them as final as entombment. Being 
old friends now, they had reminiscences in common, 
they laid plans for doing once more, before the in- 
exorable end, the things they had already done, 
excursions or pilgrimages they had made all four 
together. ‘We must try once more in our lives 
to go together to the little wild wood at Beicos; 
and once more, for the last time, we must visit 
Nedjibeh’s grave.’ 

To André, whose heart turned cold each time 
the name of the month changed, the morning of 
the rst of September marked a long stride down- 
ward in this descending slide in life, which gathered 
pace like a fall. It seemed to him that the air had 
suddenly, since yesterday, acquired an autumnal 
clearness and crispness, and that it was more 
pervious to sound, an effect generally of the later 
year; the deep-toned Turkish trumpets rang out 
louder when they were sounded on the opposite 
shore at Beicos, where the soldiers have barracks 
under the shady plane-trees. The summer was 
departing, no doubt, and here collected with a 


314 DISENCHANTED XXXIX 


shiver that the lilac crocuses were flowering now 
among the dead leaves in the valley of the Grand 
Signior. 

And yet how radiant it all was this morning, 
and what perfect calm lay on the waters! There 
was not a breath, and as the sun mounted in the 
heavens it grew deliciously warm. A long caravan 
of sailing vessels was now passing up the Bosphorus, 
towed by a steam-tug — old-world Turkish boats 
with a high-cabined poop covered with gaudy 
archaic painting, such ships as are seen nowhere 
else. With all sails reefed they submissively fol- 
lowed each other towards the Black Sea, to which 
the passage was visible between two steep mountain 
shores, and it looked like the most calm and in- 
offensive sea in the world to any one who did not 
know it better. Just beneath his windows André 
saw the sun-smitten little quay by which gay 
caiques lay moored, his among the number, to 
carry him in the evening to the Sweet Waters. 

The Sweet Waters! Four or five times yet 
he might be seen there, figuring as an Oriental — 
on the green-set stream where he was ‘dressed in 
a little brief’ royalty, and veiled ladies recognised 
the livery of his rowers from afar. And for some 
days yet he might sit at sunset under the giant 
planes of the Grand Signior, smoking narghilehs 
in the heart of unutterable peace, while watching 
the slow, wandering women, happy shades in the 
Elysian meadows beyond. ‘Thirty or thirty-five 
summer days yet to come, a really precious respite 
before the end of everything, which was not 
immediate after all ! 


XXXIX DISENCHANTED 315 


The slopes of Asia above Beicos were brightly 
pink that morning with full-flowering heath — as 
pink as pink ribbon. The little houses of the 
Turkish villages standing quite in the water, the 
huge green plane-trees, on which for three hundred 
years the fishermen have hung their nets — all 
these and the blue sky were calmly gazing at their 
own reflection in the mirror of the Bosphorus, as 
perfect as if its beauty never changed. All these 
things together seemed so confident of the per- 
manence of summer, of peace, of life, and of 
youth, that André once more allowed himself to 
be beguiled, forgot the time of year, and ceased 
to feel the threat of coming days. 

So, in the afternoon, he went to the Sweet 
Waters, where everything shone in an ideal light; 
he passed his three friends, and met the glances of 
other veiled ladies. He returned in a matchless 
evening, creeping along under the Asiatic coast: 
old houses closely dumb, in which tragedies may 
be acting which none may know; old gardens, 
secret gardens under dense leafy shade; old 
marble quays, jealously watched, where invisible 
fair ones sit on Fridays to see the caiques coming 
home. Lulled by the quick measure of the oars 
he was borne through the softly fanning air; 
merely to breathe it was intoxicating. He felt 
rested; he knew he looked young again at this 
moment, and the zest for life was aroused in him 
as keen as in his first youth, the same thirst to 
revel utterly in everything that might come. His 
soul, usually a. dark abyss of weariness, could still 
change under the voluptuous fascination of outer 


316 DISENCHANTED XXXIX 


things, or of some phantasmagoria that appealed 
to his artist’s sense, — change, be born again, and 
feel ready for a whole chapter of adventures and 
love affairs. 

He brought back with him in his caique his 
friend Jean Renaud, who confided to him in 
burning words his woe in being in love with a 
lady of an Embassy, very politely indifferent to 
his devotion, and at the same time in love with 
Djenan, whom he had never seen, but whose form 
and voice disturbed his slumbers. André listened 
without even shrugging his shoulders, such 
avowals were so completely in the right key this 
evening; he felt himself at the same pitch as this 
boy, and absorbed in precisely the same ideas; 
nothing else counted. Love pervaded the air. 
Confidence for confidence, he was tempted to cry 
out in a tone of triumph: ‘Well, and I—I—am 
better loved than you!’ 

They proceeded on their way in silence, each 
man for himself egotistically lost in thought, 
chiefly of love; the splendour of a summer 
evening on the Bosphorus wrapped them in 
reverie. Alongside, the prohibited landings of 
the old houses glided by; women sitting at the 
very edge watched them pass in the now copper- 
coloured light, and it amused them to think that _ 
to these veiled spectators their presence, their 
caique with its quaintly strange colouring, must 
have a fine effect under the apotheosis of sunset. 


XL 


SEPTEMBER is ended. The fine rosy hue of the 
heath on the hills is fading day by day, turning to 
the colour of rust. And in the valley of Beicos 
the lilac colchicum is in profuse bloom among the 
grass of the lawns; the strewn leaves of the 
planes, a bed of gold, lie everywhere. In the 
afternoon, to smoke a narghileh outside the booth 
of one of the humble cafés which still remain 
though they will soon be gone, a place in the 
sunshine is desirable, the last warmth of the 
shortening summer; presently when the beams 
lie level on the ground, and a red glow like the 
reflection of a conflagration lights up the great 
boughs of the trees, a sudden chill nips and 
distresses you; you start up to go, and the dead 
leaves in the grass rustle under your feet. The 
heavy autumn rains which leave the meadow 
soaked, alternate with days still hot and strangely 
clear, when bees hum over the last flowers of the 
scabious, till at nightfall cold mists rise from the 
ground and the woods. 

All this strew of yellow leaves André had 
already seen in this same valley the previous year; 
and one is attached to a place where twice one has 
seen the leaves fall. So he knew what the pain 

317 


318 DISENCHANTED XL 


would be of leaving for ever this little pastoral 
nook of Asia, whither he had come almost every 
day during two sunlit summers. He knew, too, 
that this pain, like so many others he had already 
suffered, would, alas! be soon forgotten, lost in 
the ever greyer gloom of the near future. 


All this season André and his friends had 
found it impossible to arrange any expedition 
together. But they had planned two at all risks, 
for the 3rd and 5th of October, the last — the last 
of everything. 

Their destination to-day, the 3rd, was the little 
forest wilderness they had discovered in 1904. 
And there they met, on the fringe of the marsh 
that lay hidden, as if on purpose, in a fold of the 
hills. They took their seats as before, on the 
same mossy stones, near the stagnant water where 
the tall reeds grew, and the great Osmunda ferns, » 
like a tropical jungle. 

André saw at once that they were not quite 
themselves, poor little persons, but nervous and 
excessive, each in her own way; Dyjenan with 
exaggerated coldness, Melek with vehemence: 
“Now we are all to be married again,’ they ex- 
plained, ‘to break up the trio of revolutionaries. 
And our proceedings are too independent, it 
would appear; we must have husbands who will 
break us in.’ 

‘So far as I am concerned,’ said Melek, ‘the 
matter was settled in family council on Saturday. 
The executioner is chosen, a certain Omar Bey, a 
cavalry captain, a handsome man with hard eyes, 


XL DISENCHANTED 319 


whom they condescended to point out to me one 
day below my window; so there will be no delay.’ 
And she stamped her foot, looking away, and 
crumpling all the leaves she could reach between 
her fingers. 

He could find nothing to say, but looked at 
the other two. He was going to say to Zeyneb, 
who was next to him: ‘And you?’ but he 
dreaded the reply; he could guess too well the 
gentle melancholy gesture with which she would 
point to her chest. So it was to Djenan, who 
alone, as usual, kept her veil down, that he ad- 
dressed his question: ‘And you?’ 

“I — oh, I,’ she said with the rather haughty 
indifference she had assumed of late, ‘I am to go 
back to Hamdi!’ 

‘But what then will you do?’ 

“Dear heaven! what would you have me do? 
I shall probably submit. Since I must be handed 
over to somebody, it may just as well be to the 
man who was my husband; it would seem less a 
degradation than with an unknown man.’ 

André heard with amazement. The thick veil 
she wore hindered him from reading in her eyes 
whether she were sincere or not in this sudden 
resignation. This unexpected consent to return 
to Hamdi was the best he could hope for as a 
solution to an inextricable predicament; but he 
could scarcely believe in it, and he also perceived 
that it was a solution full of suffering for him. 

They spoke no more on these burning ques- 
tions, and a thoughtful silence ensued. It was 
Djenan’s soft voice that broke it in this still spot, 


320 DISENCHANTED XL 


so calm that they could hear each leaf as it fell. 
Her tone was quite simple, quite cool, as she 
spoke of the book. 

“Ah, yes,’ said he, trying to be less serious; 
‘to be sure, let us discuss the book. We have 
thought no more about it for a long time. Now, 
what am I to say in it? ‘That you pine to go to 
parties in the evening, to wear hats by day — fine 
hats with heaps of roses and feathers like the 
ladies of Pera ?’ 

‘No, André, do not make fun of it, to-day — 
so near the last.’ 

So he listened to them attentively. Without 
having the smallest illusions as to what he could 
achieve for them, at least he was anxious not to 
place them in an imaginary light, or write any- 
thing that did not accord with their own ideas. 
It seemed to him that they clung to most of the 
traditions of Islam, and really loved the veil as a 
habit, if only they might sometimes lift it in the 
presence of chosen and tried friends. ‘The maxi- 
mum they claimed was that they should be 
regarded to a greater extent as thinking, free, and 
responsible beings; that they should be allowed 
to see certain men in their homes, veiled, if it 
were insisted on, but to talk to them — especially 
when there was any question of marriage. ‘With 
no greater concessions than these,’ said Djenan 
emphatically, “we would rest satisfied, we and the 
women after us for at least half a century, till 
a more advanced stage of our evolution. Say 
plainly, as our friend, that we ask no more, so 
that we may not be condemned for folly and 


XL DISENCHANTED 4a1 


rebellion. Moreover, I defy any one to find in 
the Book of the Prophet any plain text which 
is opposed to what we demand.’ 

When he took leave of them as evening came 
on, he felt that the little hand Melek held out to 
him was burning. 

‘Oh!’ he exclaimed in alarm, ‘but you are in 
a high fever.’ 

“Since yesterday — a fever which is increasing. 
So much the worse for Captain Omar Bey — eh? 
This evening I am really ill; such a weight in my 
head —a weight! I felt I must see you again; 
for nothing else should I have got up to-day.’ 

She leaned on Djenan’s arm. When they 
reached the plain — the meadow carpeted with lilac 
flowers and strewn with golden leaves — they must 
seem not to know him, since there were other 
people there, and groups of women, those graceful, 
slow-paced groups, who come in the afternoon to 
walk in the valley of Beicos. André, as usual, 
watched them depart, but with the conviction this 
time that never, never again should he see this 
scene: at the golden hour of autumn sundown, 
these three slender creatures of transition and 
anguish, looking like pagan shades and vanishing 
down this Vale of Rest, over the bright, unreal- 
looking grass; one in her black shroud, and the 
other two veiled in white. 

When they had disappeared he turned towards 
the booths of Turkish coffee, still there under the 
trees, and ordered a narghileh, though the cool 
dew of an October evening had already begun to be 
felt. He sat down to meditate, against one of the 

¥ 


322 DISENCHANTED XL 


great planes in a fast-dying sunbeam. A cata- 
clysm had engulfed him. Djenan’s resignation 
had destroyed his dream, his last dream of the 
East. Without being quite aware of it, he had 
so entirely trusted to everything lasting after his 
departure. Separated from him, and not seeing 
him grow older, she would, he had hoped, have 
preserved for him a sort of idealised love which 
would long have withstood the shocks and dis- 
appointments which kill ordinary love. But no, 
taken back by Hamdi, who was young, and who 
doubtless still had a hold over her senses, she 
would be utterly lost to him, André: ‘She did 
not love me so much as all that,’ thought he. ‘I 
am very simple and presumptuous still! It was 
all very pretty, but it was “literature”; and it is 
all over, or to be accurate, it never existed. lam 
as old as my years, and this at any rate proves it. 
To-morrow I shall be naught at all, either for her 
or for any other woman.’ 

He remained the last smoker left under the plane- 
trees. Quite past now was the time of fine warm 
evenings which brought so many dreamers from 
the neighbourhood to loiter in this valley; the 
low red sun had no power; it was cold. 

‘I still persist in trying to spin out my last 
summer,’ said he to himself, ‘but it is as vain and 
absurd as trying to prolong my youth. The time 
for such things is past and gone.’ 

The sun had now set behind the European 
shore, and in the distance the goatherds were 
piping to collect their flocks. The meadow about 
him, deserted now under the scattered yellow 


XL DISENCHANTED 323 


trees, had the look of wild melancholy which he 
remembered so well from the late autumn last 
year. The melancholy of twilight and of fallen 
leaves, the melancholy of parting, the melancholy 
of having lost Djenan, and going back to daily 
life, —it was all unendurable, and spoke too plainly 
of universal death. 


XLI 


For some few days past they had contrived a 
very ingenious means of corresponding in case of 
urgency. One of their friends named Kiamouran 
had authorised André to imitate her handwriting, 
which was well known to the suspicious household, 
and to sign her name; she had also supplied him 
with several envelopes with her monogram ad- 
dressed to Djenan by her own hand. Thus he 
could write to them, in carefully chosen words, 
however, for fear of letters being opened, and his 
man-servant, accustomed to wearing a fez and 
carrying a rosary, conveyed these notes direct to the 
yali of the three little sinners. Sometimes André 
sent him at a fixed hour, agreed upon beforehand; 
then one of the three would happen to be in the 
vestibule and to have sent away the negroes, so 
that a verbal message might be given to such a 
trustworthy messenger. 

So on the following day he ventured to send one 
of these notes, signed ‘Kiamouran,’ to ask after 
Melek’s fever, and inquire whether they would 
still make the excursion to the mosque on the hill. 
In the afternoon he had an answer from Djenan, 
saying that Melek was in bed with increased fever, 
and that the two others could not leave her. 

324 


XLI DISENCHANTED 325 


Well, even alone, he was bent on the walk on 
the 5th of October, the day they had named for 
going there all together for the last time. 

The weather was exquisite, that of the Southern 
autumn; the bees were humming. He believed 
himself to be less attached to-day to his little Turk- 
ish friends, even to Djenan, and he felt that he 
could take up life once more, elsewhere, where 
they would not be. He thought, too, that his 
regrets on leaving would be less for them than for 
the East itself, the unchanging East which he had 
so passionately loved from his earliest youth, and 
for the lovely summer here, now ending; for this 
pastoral nook of Asia, where he had spent two 
seasons in the old-world calm, under the shade of 
the trees, with the fragrance of the leaves and 
mosses. And what lovely sunshine, again to-day! 
The oaks, the scabious, the bracken all russet and 
gold, reminded him of the woods of his French 
home, to such a pitch that he suddenly was thrown 
back to the impressions of a long-past time when, at 
the end of his holidays as a boy, he was obliged at 
. this time of year to leave the country where he 
had played games for many happy hours under 
‘September skies. 

As he mounted the hill by the narrow mossy 
paths through the heath, and the horizon rose 
before him, his vision of France faded away. 
This was no longer the thing; the sense of being 
in Turkey took its place. The reaches of the 
Bosphorus lay at his feet, the villages and palaces 
on its shores, and the long lines of slowly moving 
boats. Inland, too, the aspect was foreign, an 


326 DISENCHANTED XLI 


endless chain of hills covered with a dense mo- 
notonous cloak of verdure, forests too vast and 
silent, such as France has no more. 

When he finally reached the plateau, beaten by 
all the winds of heaven, which formed the front 
court of the old lonely mosque, a number of 
Turkish women were there, seated on the grass, 
having come on a pilgrimage in very primitive 
ox-carts. Quick —as soon as they saw him — 
quick with the muslin veils to wrap and hide their 
faces. And they were at once a silent company of 
shrouded spectres, projected with archaic charm 
against the immense expanse of the Black Sea, 
which had suddenly come into view, filling the 
distance. 

And André said to himself that the enchant- 
ment of this land and its mystery would survive 
everything, even his disillusionment in Djenan, 
and the disenchantment of the decline of years. 


XLII 


On the next day, a Friday, he would not miss 
going to the Sweet Waters of Asia, for this was 
indeed the very last time. His agreement for the 
season, for the hire of the caique and oarsmen, 
expired that evening, and the Embassies were 
to move back to Constantinople in the following 
week. The season on the Bosphorus was ending. 

No day of midsummer was ever so brilliant 
and so still; but that there were fewer pleasure- 
boats, perhaps, by the already somewhat deserted 
shore, it might have been a Friday in a fine 
August. Out of habit, and attachment too, he 
would once more, come what might, steer his 
caique past the closed windows of his friends’ yali. 
The little white signal was in its place. What an 
inexplicable surprise! Were they coming out? 

At the Sweet Waters the meadows were golden 
by the side of the pretty stream, so covered were 
they with fallen leaves, and the trees told plainly 
of autumn. Nevertheless, most of the handsome 
caiques that frequented the place came in one after 
another, full of beauties from the harems, and 
André, as he passed, met once more, in final fare- 
well, many a covert smile from beneath a veil. 

He waited a long time, looking out on all 

327 


328 DISENCHANTED XLII 


sides; but his friends did not come, and the day 
was waning, and the ladies began to go home. 

So he, too, was going away when, just as he got 
out of the river, he saw coming, in a handsome 
caique, with a blue and gold livery, a woman alone, 
wearing a white yashmak, letting her eyes be seen. 
She was perched, no doubt, on cushions, for she 
looked tall, and sat high above the water, as if on 
purpose to be better seen. 

The boats crossed, and she looked at him 
steadily. Dyjenan! ‘Those bronze-green eyes and 
the long tawny eyebrows, which she had hidden 
from him for a year past, were like no others, 
and could not ever be mistaken. He shuddered 
at this apparition an arm’s length from him; but 
he must keep his countenance before the boatmen, 
and they passed each other motionless, without a 
sign on either side. 

However, he turned his caique a minute later, 
to meet her again as she came down the stream. 
There was hardly any one left when they again 
crossed each other in a flash; and on this second 
meeting the form enveloped in the white muslin 
yashmak stood out against the dark cypresses and 
the headstones of the old graveyard on the very 
edge of the water there — for in that. land there are 
cemeteries everywhere, no doubt to keep che thought 
of death ever in mind. 

The sun was low, and its beams already red; 
they must go. Their two caiques left the little 
river almost at the same time, and turned up the 
Bosphorus in the glorious evening, André’s_ boat 
about a hundred yards behind Djenan’s. He saw 


XLII DISENCHANTED 329 


her, from afar, set foot on her marble steps and go 
back into her gloomy dwelling. 

What she had done told him a tale: to have 
gone alone to the Sweet Waters, and yet more in 
a yashmak, to show him her eyes and stamp their 
expression on her friend’s memory. But André, 
who had at once felt how special and how pathetic 
this was, remembered presently a pa nee Medjeh, 
in which he had related something analogous in 
speaking of looks solemnly exchanged in a vessel 
at the moment of parting. ‘It was very pretty 
of her,’ he sadly reflected, ‘but, again, rather 
“literary’’; she was imitating Nedjibeh. It will 
not hinder her a few days hence from opening her 
arms again to her Hamdi.’ 

He went on his way up the Bosphorus close 
under the Asiatic shore. Many houses were 
already empty, hermetically closed; many gardens 
had their gates barred under a tangle of crimson 
Virginia creeper; everywhere autumn had laid its 
hand — departure —the end. Here and there on 
the little, prohibited landing-places some women 
who had lingered in the country were sitting by 
the water on this last Friday of the season; but 
their eyes — all that could be seen of their features 
— were sad at the thought of returning, now so 
soon, to the town harems, and at the apprehension 
of winter. And the setting sun lighted up all this 
melancholy like red Bengal fire. 

When André was at home again in his rooms 
at Therapia, his rowers came to make their farewell 
selam; they had put on their own common 
clothes, and each man brought back, carefully 


330 DISENCHANTED XLIl 


folded, his fine Broussa gauze shirt and smart 
orange-velvet jacket. “They brought also the long 
carpet of the same stuff, artlessly advising him to 
have it well dried, as it was soaked with damp and 
salt. André looked at the tawdry relics; the gold 
embroidery had already begun to assume, in the 
wind and sun, the rich tawny tones of things old 
and precious. What could he do with them? 
Would it not be less sad to destroy them than to 
take them home with him and say to himself in 
the dreary future, one day when he found the 
things, ‘That was the livery of my boatmen, 
long ago, in the good time when I lived on the 
Bosphorus’ ? 

It was growing dark. He desired his Turkish 
servant, the man who had once been a shepherd at 
Eski Chehir, to bring his pipe and play the same 
air again as he had played last year, the sort of 
wild fugue, which now held to him the unutterable 
expression of the dying summer in this place and 
under these particular circumstances. ‘Then, with 
his elbows on the window-sill, he watched his 
caique disappear, the rowers mere poor boatmen, 
who would pull it down to Constantinople to hire 
themselves to some new master. For a long time 
he watched the slender white thing on the ever 
darkening water, for its disappearance in twilight 
greyness represented to him the similar vanishing 
of two oriental summers. 


XLII 


On Saturday the 7th of October, his last day by 
the sea, he received a few lines from Djenan, telling 
him that Melek’s fever was worse, that the old 
people were uneasy, and that they were returning 
to the city that very day for a consultation of 
physicians. 

All the Embassies were packing to go. André 
hurried through his preparations in order to have 
time to go over once more to the Asiatic shore 
before nightfall, and bid farewell to the valley of 
the Grand Signior. It was late when he arrived 
there, under a sky across which heavy clouds were 
racing and shedding some drops of rain as they 
swept by. The valley was deserted, and the little 
coffee-stalls under the trees had been removed since 
yesterday. He took leave of two or three humble 
souls who dwelt there in huts; and of a good 
yellow dog and a good grey cat, little souls also of 
this valley; he had known them for two summers, 
and they seemed to understand that he was going 
forever. And then, at a funereal pace, he walked 
round these quiet, sheltered meadows, now aban- 
doned, where the veils of his friends had so often 
brushed the grass and the lilac flowers of the 
colchicum. ‘This walk kept him there till the hour 

331 


332 DISENCHANTED XLII 


of dusk, when the stars come out and the barking 
of the wandering dogs begins to be heard. His 
pilgrimage ended, by the time he found himself 
under the huge trees, a sort of sacred grove, at the 
entrance to the valley, it was quite dark, and his 
feet caught in the roots that lay like snakes under 
the thick mass of dead leaves. In the gloom he 
went down to the little landing-place, of which 
each granite block was familiar to him, and took a 
caique to return to the European shore. 


XLIV 


Tue wind has raged all night on the Bosphorus, 
the wind from the Black Sea whose lugubrious tones 
will ere long be heard almost incessantly during 
four or five winter months; and this morning the 
blast has gained in violence and shakes André’s 
dwelling, to add to the sadness of his last waking 
at Therapia. 

“My word, but this is weather!’ exclaims his 
man as he opens the shutters. Opposite, on the 
hills of Asia, low heavy clouds are being dragged 
along, almost touching the storm-tossed trees. 

And it was in this threatening gale and the 
lashing squalls of rain that he went to-day down 
the Bosphorus for the last time, passing his friends’ 
yali, where everything was closed and shuttered, 
while flights of dead leaves danced i in a whirl on 
the marble steps. 

This evening he would be again in Constanti- 
nople, but for such a little while before his final 
departure! Just fifty days, for he had decided to 
take the steamship sailing on the 30th of November 
and return to France by sea, just to have a fixed 
date before him, unalterable, and to which he must 
adhere. 

A letter from Djenan at nightfall brought him 

Jao. 


334 DISENCHANTED XLIV 


the report of the physicians. Brain fever, of a 
serious type from the first. So poor little Melek, 
no doubt, was to die, worn out by so much nervous 
excitement, and the rebellion and horror she felt at 
this second marriage. 


XLV 


THE two weeks at the end of October, while 
Melek lay dying, were almost invariably fine, 
with a melancholy sun; André, every evening, 
like a schoolboy, scratched through the day that 
was gone on a calendar, where the 3oth of 
November was marked with a cross. He spent 
as much time as possible in Stamboul, in the 
Turkish life that was so soon to end for him. 
But here, as on the Bosphorus, the sadness 
of autumn added to that of his approaching 
departure; already it was growing cold, almost 
too cold for narghilehs and dreams in the open 
air, in front of the sacred mosques under the trees 
shedding their leaves. 

He, of course, saw no more of his friends, for 
Zeyneb and Djenan never left her who was dying. 
Towards the end they placed in the lattice of a 
window an imperceptible scrap of white which 
meant: She is still alive; and he felt sure that 
a scrap of blue would tell him: All is over. So, 
early every morning, and again once or twice in 
the day, he, or his friend Jean Renaud, or his 
French servant, went to the cemetery at Kassim 
Pacha, to look up anxiously at the window. 

All that time, in the house where she was 

335 


336 DISENCHANTED XLV 


dying, and where perfect silence reigned, Imams, 
at the request of the old people, were perpetually 
praying. Islam, old Islam, with its divine care 
for the dying, was closing in on its recalcitrant 
child, who yielded gradually to its influence and 
was falling asleep without terror. In her, indeed, 
doubt was still a curable evil, a very recent graft 
on a long-inherited stock of faith and quietism. 
And so by degrees the crude observances which 
are to the Koran what, with us, the practices at 
Lourdes are to the Gospel, nay, even the supersti- 
tions of her venerable grandmothers, no longer 
shocked this little infidel of yesterday, who allowed 
them to provide her with amulets and submitted 
to have her clothes exorcised by dervishes; her 
dainty shifts were blessed in the mosque at Eyoub, 
elegant garments from the ‘right shop’ in Paris, 
or they were sent further still, to Scutari, to the 
Howling Saints whose breath has the gift of 
healing, so long as they remain in their ecstasy 
after long appeals to Allah. 

As October ended, she had already been speech- 
less for two days and probably unconscious, sunk 
in a hot and heavy sleep which the doctors said 
must end in death. 


XLVI 


On the 2nd of November Zeyneb, who was 
watching by her pillow, suddenly turned round 
with a_ shudder, for, at the end of the half- 
darkened room, a voice was heard breaking the 
persistent silence, a very sweet, young voice 
saying prayers. She had not heard the girl 
come in—a girl with a veiled face. Why was 
she there, Koran in hand? Ah, yes; she under- 
stood at once! The prayer for the dead. It is 
the custom in Turkey when some one is dying in 
a house, for the girls or women of the neighbour- 
hood to come in turns to read prayers; they enter 
as a right, without giving a name or raising their 
veils, nameless and fateful; and their presence is a 
sign of death, as that of the priest who brings 
extreme unction, is to Catholics. 

Melek, too, understood, and her eyes, for some 
time shut, opened again. She had reached that 
mysterious better which almost always super- 
venes in dying persons. She recovered her voice 
too, which they had thought extinct for ever. 
“Come nearer,’ she said to the unknown reader; 
“I do not hear distinctly. Do not think that I 
am afraid, come close. Read louder — that I may 
not lose 





2 337 


338 DISENCHANTED XLVI 


Then she desired herself to confess the Moslem 
faith, and spreading her little waxen white hands 
in the attitude of prayer, she repeated the sacra- 
mental words: ‘There is no God but one God, 
and Mahomet is his Prophet.’ * 

But before she reached the end of the con- 
fession, as inaudible as a breath, the poor out- 
stretched hands fell. Then the nameless one 
reopened her Koran and began to read once 
more. How sweet is the rhythm, the lulling 
music of those Moslem prayers, especially when 
they are chanted by a girl’s voice under a thick 
veil! Till a very late hour the unknown readers 
carried on their pious task, one after another 
coming in as silently as shades; but there was 
no pause in the melodious drone that soothes and 
helps the departing spirit. 

Others, too, would come in on tiptoe, and 
without speaking would bend over the bed of 
mortal sleep: the mother, a kind and passive 
creature, always so much ignored that she hardly 
counted; the two grandmothers, not resigned, 
but dumb and almost fierce in their concentrated 
despair; or the father, Mehmed Bey, his face 
dishigured by grief and perhaps by remorse, for 
in his heart he adored his little Melek, and it 
was his inexorable observance of old customs 
that had led to her death. Or else, trembling 
all over, Madame Tardieu, the former governess, 
sent for a few days since because Melek had 
wished it, but only tolerated with some hostile 


1 La illahé illallah Mohammed Ressoul allah. Ech hedu enné la illahé 
illallah vé ech hedu enné Mohammedul alihé hou ve ressoulouhou. 


XLVI DISENCHANTED 339 


feeling, and regarded as a responsible and evil 
influence. The dying girl’s eyes had closed 
again; but for a slight clenching of her hands 
now and then, or a twitching of her lips, she 
gave no more sign of life. 


XLVII 


It was about four in the morning. Djenan was 
now keeping watch. A minute since the veiled 
reader, whose prayers filled the room, had raised 
her voice a little in the more solemn silence, 
praying with excited fervour, as if conscious that 
something had happened — something final. And 
Djenan, who was still holding one of the little 
transparent hands without noticing that it was 
growing cold, started with terror when a hand 
was laid on her shoulder —two little warning pats, 
ominously gentle. But oh! the fearful face of 
an old woman she had never seen before, who 
suddenly stood behind her, having entered with- 
out a sound by the always open door; a tall, old 
woman, broad, but lean and haggard, who without 
a word signed to her: ‘Go.’ She had, no doubt, 
long been waiting in the passage, and then, feeling 
with professional certainty that her moment had 
come, she approached to perform her part. 

‘No! no!’ cried Djenan, throwing herself on 
the dead. ‘Not yet! I will not let you take her 
away. No! no!’ 

“There, there, gently,’ said the old woman, 
raising her authoritatively. ‘I will not hurt her.’ 

And in fact there was nothing malignant in 

340 


XLVI DISENCHANTED 341 


her ugliness; rather a sullen compassion, and 
above all utter weariness. So many, so many 
sweet flowers mown down in the harems! so 
many she had carried out, this strong-armed 
woman,'this ‘Washer of the dead,’ as they are 
called. | 

She took her in her arms like a sick child, and 
the fine red hair, all tumbled, fell over her hideous 
shoulder. Two of her assistants, old hands too, 
and more terrifying still, were waiting in the 
ante-room with lights. Djenan and the praying 
woman followed them along corridors and halls 
wrapped in the cold silence of dawn — the weirdly 
woeful group which went on and on towards the 
stairs to go down. 

Thus little Melek Sadia Saadet, at the age of 
twenty years and six months, died of dread at the 
idea of being a second time thrown into the arms 
of a strange master. 

Having descended to the lower floor, the old 
women carried their burden to the door of a large 
room in the servants’ quarters of this ancient 
dwelling; a sort of serving-room paved with 
marble, with a deal table in the middle, a large 
pan of steaming hot water, and a sheet lying 
unfolded on a tripod. In the corner was a 
coffin — a light coffin of thin boards, as they are 
made in Turkey — and finally, on the floor an 
antique shawl rolled round a pole, one of the 
*Valideh’ shawls which are used as winding- 
sheets for the wealthy; and all had been pre- 
pared beforehand, for in Turkey no time is lost 


in burying the dead. 


342 DISENCHANTED XLVI 


When the old women had laid the girl on the 
table, which was rather short, the beautiful red 
hair, not yet fastened up, fell to the ground. 
Before beginning their task they dismissed Djenan 
and her veiled companion by a sign. But in fact 
they withdrew of their own accord to wait out- 
side. And Zeyneb, aroused by some intuition of 
what was happening, came to join them — Zeyneb, 
not weeping, but as pale as the dead, her eyes set in 
purple rings. All three stood there motionless, 
frozen, following in fancy the processes of this toilet 
of the dead, listening to the splashing of water and 
moving of various objects in the echoing room; 
and when it was all over the tall old woman called 
them in: ‘Come and look at her now.’ 

She lay sunk in the narrow coffin, wrapped in 
white all but her face, left uncovered for farewell 
kisses; they could not quite shut her eyelids nor 
her mouth; but she was so young, her teeth were 
so white, that she was still exquisitely pretty, with 
the expression of a child, and a sort of sorrowful 
half-smile on her lips. 

Then every one was roused to come and kiss 
her: her father, her mother, her grandparents, 
her stern old uncles, who for some days now had 
ceased to be stern, the servants, and the slaves. 
The great mansion was full of sudden lights, of 
alarms, hurrying feet, sighs and sobs. 

When one of the grandmothers came in, the 
most violent of the two—she who was also 
Djenan’s grandmother and had for some time 
taken up her abode in this house — a thorough- 
going ‘1320,’ an uncompromising Moslem if ever 


XLVII DISENCHANTED 343 


there was one, only this morning exasperated by 
the new evolution which had carried away her 
granddaughters — when this old lady came into 
the room the shivering governess, Mademoiselle 
Tardieu, was on her knees by the coffin. The 
two women looked at each other for a moment 
in silence, one terrible, the other terrified and 
humble. 

‘Go!’ said the old woman in Turkish, quiver- 
ing with hatred. ‘What have you to do here — 
Your work is done. Do you hear me? 

o!’ 

But the poor soul, shrinking away from her, 
looked up with such honesty and woe in her tear- 
filled eyes, that the old woman was suddenly 
moved to pity; she understood, no doubt, in a 
lightning-flash, what for years she had refused to 
recognise: that the governess, all through, was 
but the irresponsible tool of Time. Then, holding 
out her hands, she cried, ‘Forgive!’ and the two 
women, hitherto enemies, wept and sobbed in each 
other’s arms. Incompatibility of ideas, of race, 
and of period had long kept them apart; but they 
were both kind and motherly, capable of tenderness 
and of spontaneous reaction. 

Meanwhile a pale gleam of light through the 
windows announced the end of the November 
night. Djenan, remembering André, went up- 
stairs to find a scrap of blue ribbon, as they had 
agreed, and tied it to the lattice of the well-known 
window. 


XLVIII 


THE man-servant who went to see at break of day 
came back to Pera quite scared. 

‘Mademoiselle Melek must be dead,’ he said 
to his master when he called him. ‘They have 
put up a blue signal; I have just seen it.’ 

The man had more than once had occasion to 
speak with Melek through a partly open door 
when he was sent on André’s dangerous messages; 
she had even let him see her face when thanking 
him. And to him she was Mademoiselle Melek, 
she looked so very young. 

André, hearing from Djenan an hour later that 
the body would be taken to the mosque at noon, 
went to Kassim Pacha at eleven o’clock. He put 
on a fez and the dress of a man of the people, to 
make more sure of not being recognised, for he 
was anxious to be able at a given moment to go 
close up to his little friend and fulfil a pious rite 
of Islam. 

He stood apart at first, in the cemetery near 
the house; and he soon saw the light coffin borne 
out, carried on the shoulders of unknown men, as 
the custom is in Turkey; a valuable old shalw 
was wrapped closely round it, a ‘Valideh’ shawl, 
striped green and red, with a minute Cashmere 

344 


XLVIII DISENCHANTED 345 


pattern all over. At the end where the head lay, 
a little white veil was put to show that the dead 
was a woman, and by way of a wonderful innova- 
tion, a small bunch of roses was pinned to the 
shawl. 

Among the Turks the dead are buried with 
more haste than among us, and no communications 
are sent out. Those who please may attend the 
funeral — relations, friends, all whom the news has 
reached, servants and neighbours. There are 
never any women in these chance gatherings, and 
above all never any bearers; the men in the street 
give their services. 

It was a fine, bright, still day, with a clear 
November sun. Stamboul was splendid across 
the Golden Horn in its lofty immutable grandeur, 
above a thin haze which hung over the seaat its foot. 

The coffin was often lifted from one man’s 
shoulder to another’s, as various persons met on 
the way volunteered for the pious task of bearing 
for a few minutes the unknown dead. Foremost 
of all walked two priests in green turbans; a 
hundred or more men followed; men of every 
degree, and some old dervishes had come, too, with 
their tall hats, chanting as they went in loud 
lugubrious voices, like the howling of wolves in 
the woods on a winter night. 

They made their way to an ancient mosque 
beyond the houses, almost in the country, in a 
valley that verged on the wilderness. Little 
Melek was deposited on the flags of the court, 
and the Imams chanted the prayers for the dead in 
a very sweet falsetto. 


346 DISENCHANTED XLVIII 


In about ten minutes at most they resumed 
their march, going down to the sea to embark in 
boats and gain the opposite shore and the great 
cemetery at Eyoub, which was to be her last 
resting-place. 

As they got nearer to the Golden Horn their 
progress was slower, by reason of the crowd which 
joined the procession; and there little Melek was 
carried by a number of boatmen and sailors who 
relieved each other. André, who had hitherto 
hung back, now at last came near, feeling safe 
among the crowd in which he was lost; he laid 
his hand on the antique shawl, put out his shoulder, 
and felt the weight of his little friend resting on 
it for about twenty paces as they approached the 
shore. 

After that he stole away, fearing lest his 
persistent following should be noticed. 


XLIX 


A WEEK later the two that were left bid him come 
to Sultan Selim. They found themselves together 
once more in the humble little dwelling, gloomy, 
hidden, and unchanging; the last meeting but one 
in all their lives, and they were both black and 
invisible under equally thick veils which they did 
not once raise. 

They talked of nothing but of her who was 
gone, who was ‘free’ as they expressed it; and from 
them André learned all the details of her death. 
It seemed to him that they were tearless under 
their black gauze masks; their voices were steady ; 
they were grave and calm. So far as Zeyneb was 
concerned there was nothing strange in this de- 
tachment, for she herself was now hardly of this 
world. But he was surprised to find Djenan so 
composed. At one moment, thinking to please 
her, he said with deep, gentle affection: ‘I was 
introduced to Hamdi Bey last Friday at Yildiz; 
he is very gentlemanly, elegant, and good- 
looking : 

But she cut him short with her first show of 
excitement. ‘If you please, André, we will not 
speak of that man.’ He then heard from Zeyneb 
that the family, quite overwhelmed by Melek’s 

347 





348 DISENCHANTED XLIX 


death, had ceased for the moment to entertain the 
idea of this marriage. 

He had indeed met Hamdi Bey, and had 
thought well of him. Since then he had tried to 
say to himself: ‘I am very happy to think the 
husband of my little friend so satisfactory!’ But 
it did not ring true; on the contrary, he suffered 
all the more acutely from having seen him and 
recognised his charm, and yet more his youth. 

After leaving them for the long walk he had so 
often taken before, from this house to his own, 
Stamboul impressed him more than ever as a city of 
decay, sadly becoming Western, and sinking into 
the commonplace of hurry and ugliness. Beyond 
the still undisturbed streets round Sultan Selim, 
and as soon as he reached the lower region near 
the bridge, his gorge rose at the swarming turmoil 
of the crowd, which, down there, never ceases; in 
the mud, in the darkness of the narrow alleys, in 
the cold evening fog, these hustling folks, selling 
and buying a myriad squalid things and horrible 
food, were no longer Turks, but a medley of all 
the races of the Levant. Excepting the red fez 
which they still cling to, half of them no longer 
wore the dignified national costume; they were 
tricked out in European second-hand garments, 
outcast from our great cities, which the trading 
ships bring out in quantities. Never had he been 
so keenly aware of the factories sending up their 
smoke in various spots, nor of the tall stupid 
houses, plaster imitations of our suburban villas. 
‘I am absurd in persisting to see Stamboul as it is 
no more,’ said he to himself. ‘It is crumbling 


XLIX DISENCHANTED 349 


away, dying out. Now one must constantly and 
carefully select the things to look at, the nooks to 
be frequented; up on the heights the mosques 
survive, but all the lower town is undermined by 
“progress,” which is advancing by long strides 
with all its squalor, its alcohol, its hopelessness, and 
its bombs. The evil breath of the West has 
passed over the city of the Khalifs; it is 
“disenchanted” now, just in the same way as ere 
long all the women of its harems will be.’ 

And then even more sadly he went on to 
reflect: ‘After all, what can it matter to me? I 
no longer belong to the place; at a fixed date, 
which will soon be here, the 30th of November, I 
shall be gone — no doubt for ever. But for the 
humble gravestones over Nedjibeh out there, 
about which I shall still be uneasy, what is there 
here that concerns me? I myself, indeed, in five 
years, or say in ten — what shall I be but a wreck? 
Life has no duration, mine is already behind me 
on the road; the things of this world will soon 
matter to me no more. Time may still run at its 
dizzy pace and sweep away the old East that I 
loved, all the Circassian beauties, with their large 
eyes of deep-sea green, and may demolish every 
human race and the world itself, the vast Cosmos 
— what will it matter to me, since I shall not see 
it? I, who am almost at an end myself, and to- 
morrow may have lost all consciousness of being.’ 

And then, at certain moments, it seemed to him 
that the 30th of November never could come, so 
completely was he at home in Constantinople, nay, 
anchored in his rooms where nothing had as yet been 


350 DISENCHANTED XLIX 
distufbed for his departure. And as he walked on 


amid the throng, while lanterns innumerable were 
lighted up, through all the cries from the stalls, 
the bargaining in every language of the Levant, 
he felt himself floating rudderless, driven by 
conflicting impressions. 


L 


NoveEMBER was drawing to a close; they had met 
for the last supreme interview. The same sun- 
beam on the opposite wall again threw its reflected 
and artificial gleam on them for a few minutes 
before twilight in this modest little harem in the 
heart of Stamboul. Pale Zeyneb, unveiled, and 
Djenan, buried in her black shroud, were con- 
versing with their friend André as calmly as in 
their former meetings; it might have been sup- 
posed that this day would have its morrow, that 
the last of November, the date that must end 
everything, was still far off, or would not come 
at all. Really there was nothing to suggest that 
never, never again after this once would they hear 
each other’s voices in this world. 

Zeyneb, without any visible emotion, was 
arranging plans for correspondence when he should 
be in France. ‘ Poste-restante is now too closely 
watched; in these times of terror no one may 
enter the post-office without giving his name. But 
our letters will be quite safe by the way I have 
planned, only it will be a little long; do not be 
surprised if we do not answer you within a fortnight 
sometimes.’ 

Djenan, with much composure, was plotting at 

35% 


352 DISENCHANTED L 


least to see her friend once more onthe afternoon ° 
of that last November day. ‘At four o’clock by 
the clock at Tophaneh, which is the hour when 
the steamships weigh anchor, we will both of 
us drive along the quay, in the commonest hired 
vehicle, you understand. We will pass as near 
the edge of the quay as possible, and you, from 
the poop, watch all the hired carriages closely, so 
as not to miss us. ‘There is always a crowd there, 
you know, and as Turkish women are never 
allowed to stop, our greeting will last but an 
instant.’ 

The reflected sunbeam was to mark the hour of 
their parting. When it vanished above the roof, 
André was to rise and leave; this had been agreed 
on from the first; this was to be the utmost limit; 
after that, all was over. 

André, who had been prepared to find them 
painfully agitated at this supreme interview, was 
astounded by their composure. Also, he had 
counted on looking once more into Djenan’s eyes 
this last time; but no; the minutes went on, and 
nothing changed in she arrangement of the severe 
tcharchaf or the folds of the veil, as immovable, 
no doubt, as though it were of bronze over the 
face of a statue. 

At about half-past three, while, for the sake of 
talking, they were discussing the Book, an almost 
sudden gloom invaded the little room, and all 
three were abruptly silent. ‘We must go,’ said 
Zeyneb, simply, in her sweet husky voice, and she 
pointed to the latticed windows no longer illumi- 
nated by the reflection from the house opposite — 


L DISENCHANTED 353 


the sunbeam had disappeared above the old roofs. 
The hour was come; André rose. During the 
very last minute, as they were standing in front of 
each other, he had time to reflect. ‘This was the 
only time, absolutely the only time, when I might 
have seen her once more before her eyes and mine 
return to dust.’ 

To be so sure of never again meeting her, and 
to leave her thus without seeing her again — no, 
this he had not expected; but he endured the 
anguish of his disappointment and grief without a 
word. He bowed ceremoniously over the little 
hand she gave him, and kissed it lightly, and that 


was all. 


And now, back through the deserted old streets, 
the dead streets — alone. 

‘It is well ended,’ said he to himself. ‘Poor 
little captive, it could have no better end! And 
I had fatuously imagined it would be dramatic.’ 

It had, indeed, ended too well; for he went 
away with a deep sense of emptiness and loneli- 
ness. He was even tempted to retrace his steps 
to the door with the old brass knocker, while they 
might still be there. And he would have said to 
Djenan: ‘We cannot part like this, dear little 
friend; you, who are so sweet and kind, do not 
make me so unhappy. Let me look once more 
into your eyes, and clasp my hand more closely; 
I should go away less miserable.’ 

Of course, he did nothing of the kind, but went 
on his way. But at that moment he loved Stam- 
boul distressfully; its myriad lights of evening were 

2A 


354 - DISENCHANTED L 


reflected in the waters; something made him cling 
to it desperately, what, he could not precisely 
define — something in the air which hung over the 
immense and various city, an emanation from the 
souls of its women, no doubt — for that is really 
almost always what attaches us to places and 
objects — the souls of the women he had loved, 
and which mingled in his memory. Was it 
Nedjibeh’s or Djenan’s, or both together ? — he 
could not tell. 


LI 


Next day two letters came: 


ZEYNEB TO ANDRE 


‘Truly, I did not understand that we met 
yesterday for the last time, or I should have fallen, 
a hapless wretch, at your feet, and implored you 
not to leave us dus. Oh! you are abandoning us 
sunk in darkness of heart and mind. You — you 
are going into light and life, and we must vegetate 
through the lamentable days, all alike, in the torpor 
of the harem. 

“When you had gone we sobbed bitterly. 
Zerichteh, Djenan’s kind nurse, came down; 
she scolded us, and took us in her arms; but she 
too, poor soul, wept at seeing us weep. 

‘ZEYNEB.’ 


‘I have sent you this morning some trifling 
Turkish souvenirs. The embroidery. is sent by 
Djenan; it is the “Ayet,” the text from the Koran 
which has watched over her bed ever since she was 
a child. Accept the scarves from me. That 
worked with roses is a Circassian veil given to me 
by my grandmother; that embroidered in silver I 

355 


356 DISENCHANTED LI 


found in an old chest in our yali. You can throw 
them over a sofa in your home in France. —Z,.’ 


DJENAN TO ANDRE 


‘I wish I could read your thoughts when the 
ship goes out round Seraglio point, when at every 
turn of the screw, the cypresses in the cemeteries, 
the minarets, the cupolas, will be a little further 
away. You will watch them till they vanish, I 
know. And then, far off in the sea of Marmora, 
your eyes will seek, under the Byzantine walls, the 
graveyard where we prayed one day. And at last 
all will be lost in mist before your eyes, the cy- 
presses of Stamboul, all the minarets and the 
domes, and before long, in your heart, every mem- 
ory of them too. 

“Well, be it so; let mist and confusion envelop 
them all; the little house at Eyoub, where you 
lived and loved, and the other humble house in the 
heart of Stamboul, near a mosque, and the vast 
melancholy mansion where once you got in by 
stealth. And all the persons of the past, let con- 
fusion blur them too — her whom you loved long 
ago, who crept by your side in her grey feridjeh, 
under the wall among the January daisies — I have 
trodden the path and called up her shade — and 
the other three later, who yearned to be your 
friends. Let them mingle all together, but keep 
them all in your heart — your remembrance is not 
enough. ‘These, too, these later friends, have 
loved you, more perhaps than you supposed. I 
know that there will be tears in your eyes when 


LI DISENCHANTED 357 


the last cypress is lost to view — and I also ask for 
a tear. 

‘And over there, when you are at home, how 
will you remember your friends? The spell once 
broken, what aspect will they assume in your 
mind? It is horrible to think that, perhaps, they 
will have ceased to exist for you, that you may 
shrug your shoulders and smile as you think of 
them. 

‘I am in such a hurry, and yet afraid, to read 
the book in which you will write about ‘Turkish 
women — about us! Shall I find in it that which 
I have vainly tried to discuss, ever since we have 
known each other, the depths of your soul, the 
inmost truth of your feelings; all that your short 
letters never reveal, nor your few words. I have 
felt emotion in you now and again, yes; but so 
quickly suppressed, so transient. There have 
been moments when I longed to tear open your 
heart and head to find out at last what lay behind 
your cold, keen eyes. 

‘Oh! André, do not say that I am crazy. I 
am miserable and alone — unhappy and struggling 
in darkness. Farewell. Pity me. Love me a 
little if you can. DJENAN.’ 


André replied: 


“There is not much left to be discovered, I 
assure you, behind my “cold, keen eyes’; much 
less do I know what there is behind yours, dear 
little enigma. You are always complaining of my 
silence and reserve. You see I have seen too much 


358 DISENCHANTED LI 


of life; when you have lived as long you will 
understand better. 

‘And if you fancy that you yourself were 
not icy — you too, yesterday, at the moment of 
parting ! 

“Then to-morrow, at four o'clock, on the 
dismal quay of Galata. In the wild medley of 
departure [ will keep a sharp lookout; I shall 
have nothing else to care for, I assure you, but just 
not to miss the passing of your beloved black 
form, since that is all you allow me ever to see 
again. ANDRE.’ 


LII 


Tuurspay, the 30th of November, dawned with 
ruthless punctuality, as every decisive and fateful 
day arrives in needless haste. Not only, to each 
of us, the day of death, but, after us, the days 
which will see the last of our generation, the end 
of Islam, the disappearance of our declining races, 
and then those which will mark the end of all time, 
the annihilation and wreck of the revolving suns, 
swallowed up in engulfing darkness. 

Fast, fast, came the 30th of November, such a 
day as any other to the majority of very various 
beings which Constantinople sees mingling in the 
crowd; but to Djenan and to André a date mark- 
ing one of the fateful turnings in life. 

The cold, grey dawn woke them both at about 
the same time; both under the same sky, and in 
the same town for a few hours yet, parted only by 
a ravine full of human dwellings, and a cypress- 
wood full of dead — but, in fact, so very far apart, 
divided by invisible barriers. He, as soon as he 
opened his eyes, was gripped by the sense of im- 
pending departure, for he had left his house and 
was camj ing in the hotel; he had taken a room 
as high up as possible to avoid the chaotic noise 
downstairs, the cloth caps of the globe-trotters 

359 


360 DISENCHANTED Lu 


from America, and the fantastic elegance of Syrian 
sharpers; but especially to command a view of 
Stamboul, with Eyoub in the distance. 

And both Djenan and André looked first at 
the horizon, the heavy rack of clouds, the direction 
of the autumn wind; he from his wide-open 
window, and she through the penitential, inevitable 
wooden lattice that imprisons a harem. 

They had hoped for a day of bright sunshine, 
and the haunting glory of the belated sun which 
sometimes sheds the warmth of a hothouse over 
Stamboul. He, that he might carry away with 
him, in his eyes greedy and crazy for colour, a last 
splendid vision of the city of minarets and cupolas. 
She, that she might be sure of succeeding in seeing 
him once more from the quay of Galata, as she 
drove past the departing ship; for otherwise 
nothing filled her with deeper melancholy than the 
pale rose-tinted lights ofa fine November afternoon, 
and she had long since told herself that if, after he 
was gone for ever, she had to come back and bury 
herself at home under one of those languid gold- 
coloured sunsets, it would be more unendurable 
than in the gloomy fall of a rainy evening. But 
then in wet weather everything would be doubtful 
and complicated; what pretext could she invent 
for going out, and how escape from the increased 
watchfulness of all the eunuchs and slaves? 

And it was going to rain, very evidently all day. 
A black sky, with clouds whirling and breaking 
under the Siberian wind; heavy masses sweeping 
low, almost touching the earth, darkening the dis- 
tance and drowning everything. Cold and wet. 


LI DISENCHANTED 361 


Zeyneb also, at the open window, was looking 
at the sky, careless of her own health, and breathing 
in the icy damp air of the Constantinople winter, 
which last year had developed in her lungs the seeds 
of death. Then it suddenly struck her that she 
was wasting precious minutes. André was not to 
leave till four o’clock in the afternoon; but she 
went, nevertheless, to see Djenan as she had pro- 
mised her yesterday; they wanted to reconsider 
their plans, and contrive more infallible arrange- 
ments, so as to drive, exactly at the right moment, 
past the place of embarkation. He would be here 
for nearly the whole day; the excitement of his 
presence, of danger and emotion, still kept them 
up; but afterwards — oh! afterwards would come 
the sudden plunge back into stagnant calm, with 
nothing more in life. 

To André, on the contrary, the day began in 
rather placid melancholy. ‘The supreme fatigue of 
having lived and loved so much, of having said 
farewell so many times, undoubtedly lulled his soul 
at the hqur of this parting, which he had imagined 
beforehand as more cruelly painful. It was with 
surprise, almost with remorse, that he detected in 
himself a sort of detachment, even before he had 
started. ‘It had to be cut short,’ said he to him- 
self. ‘When I am gone, everything will be better 
for her; everything will be forgotten, alas! in 
Hamdi’s caresses.’ 

But what a disastrous sky for his last day! 
He had intended to go across to Stamboul, to 
wander sadly round in the mild November sun- 
shine. But it was impossible in this wintry 


9 


362 DISENCHANTED LI 


weather, it would leave a too painful last im- 
pression. He would not cross the bridge — never 
again — but stay in uninteresting, muddy Pera, 
frittering away the day till the hour of departure. 


Two o’clock, time to leave the hotel and go 
down towards the sea. Before starting, however, 
he had the crowning distress of looking once 
more out of window towards Eyoub and the great 
fields of the dead, which he could not possibly see 
from below, neither from Galata, nor from any 
other spot; far, far away in the haze, beyond 
Stamboul, something like a stiff black crest 
showed against the horizon, a crest of hundreds of 
cypresses which, in spite of the distance, could be 
seen to stir, so wrung were they by the wind. 

When he had looked out, he went away down 
to the low quarter of Galata, always crowded by a 
horrible Levantine mob, the part of Constantinople 
which is most infected by the perpetual arrival of 
steamships, and the travellers they bring, and the 
modern pedlars’ rubbish that they unceasingly 
pour out on the ancient city of the Khalifs. A 
black sky, alleys padded with sticky mire, filthy 
wine-shops reeking of tobacco smoke and the 
anise-flavoured alcohol of the Greeks, a jostling 
mass of porters in rags, and hordes of mangy dogs. 
Of all this the magician Sun sometimes makes a 
thing of beauty; but to-day, what a mockery 
under the winter rain ! 


Four o’clock now; the November day is closing 


in, darkening behind the heavy rack of clouds. 


Lu DISENCHANTED 363 


It is the hour fixed for departure — the hour, too, 
when Djenan is to drive slowly past for the last 
farewell. André, having chosen his cabin, and 
seen his luggage on board, took a place on the 
upper deck at the stern, surrounded by friendly 
members of the various Embassies who had come 
to see the last of him, sometimes absorbed and 
inattentive in his watch for the carriage, and 
sometimes forgetting those who were to be in 
it, while he laughingly chatted with the friends 
about him. 

The quay was as usual packed with people. 
It no longer rained. The air was full of the 
noise of engines, of steam-cranes, of cries and calls 
from the porters and the sailors, in every lan- 
guage of the Levant. This wet crowd, hustling 
and shouting, was a motley of Turkish costumes 
and European rags, but the fez, worn by almost 
every one, gave an oriental aspect to the whole 
scene. The cafés all along the street, behind 
this crowd, were full of Levantines; faces crowned 
with red caps were to be seen at every window of 
the wooden houses, which are perpetually full of 
oriental strumming and the smoke of narghilehs. 
And all of them were watching — as they always 
watch —the departing steamships. But beyond 
this intrusive quarter, this confusion of costumes 
and this noise — beyond, and divided from it by 
the waters of the gulf bearing a forest of ships, 
Stamboul the great lifted its mosques above the 
fog; its sovereign mass crushing all nearer ugli- 
ness, its silence reigning above the squalid 
turmoil. 


364. DISENCHANTED Lil 


Will they come? Poor little things! For a 
moment André almost forgets them in the inevit- 
able excitement of leave-taking, bewildered as he 
is by shaking hands, by answering remarks of 
careless fun. And, in fact, he is no longer quite 
sure that it is he who is leaving; he has so often 
found himself on board one of these vessels, in 
front of these quays and this same crowd, to 
welcome or to speed a friend, as is customary in 
Constantinople. And besides, the city of Stamboul 
up against the sky has been much his own, almost 
his home more than a quarter of a century since; 
is it possible that he is really going away? No; 
it seems to him now that he will go back there 
to-morrow as usual, back to the old familiar spots 
and the well-known faces. 

But the second warning bell has rung, the 
friends who came to see him off go on shore; the 
stern deck is deserted, only those who are really 
leaving stand there, looking at each other. There 
is no disputing it; that second bell, the last, had 
a funereal tone — and then André pulls himself 
together. 

Ah! that carriage over there must be the very 
one. A hired coupé — shabby enough, but then 
she had told him so — moving forward even more 
slowly than the crowd necessitates. It is coming 
quite close, the window is down, and there are 
certainly two women in it veiled in black. And 
one of them suddenly raises her veil: Djenan! 
Djenan, who would be seen! Dyjenan, who for a 
second looks straight at him, with such a face of 
anguish as he never can forget. 


LII DISENCHANTED 305 


Her eyes flash through her tears; but they are 
gone! The veil has fallen; and this time André 
understands the finality of this veiling, an end for 
all eternity, as when we hide a beloved face under 
the lid of the cofin. She did not lean out of the 
window, she did not wave her hand, she gave no 
sign; nothing but just that look, which indeed 
was enough to involve a Turkish woman in 
serious danger. And the hired coupé went slowly 
on its way, vanishing through the crowd. 

That look had struck André to the heart more 
than any words or all her letters. ‘The groups on 
the quay, who were waving adieux with hands and 
hats, had ceased to exist for him. ‘There was 
nothing in the world but that carriage in the 
distance, slowly returning to a harem. His eyes, 
though he would fain have watched it, were 
suddenly dim; he saw everything in a quivering 
mist. 

What now? Can he be dreaming? The 
carriage, still going quite slowly, is fast disappear- 
ing, and not in the direction in which the horses 
are moving. It is going off sideways like a 
dissolving view, and with it the people, the 
swarms of figures, the houses, the city! The 
ship is off: without a sound or a jerk or a throb 
of the screw. Absorbed in thought, he had not 
observed. The huge steamship, towed by tugs, 
was stealing away from land without any sensible 
motion; it was as if the quay were moving, 
slipping very quickly away with all its ugliness 
and its crowds, while high Stamboul, further 
away, had not yet stirred. ‘The uproar of voices 


366 DISENCHANTED LI 


died away, the waving hands were no longer in 
sight — nor the black shape of that carriage among 
the myriad red specks that were Turkish fezzes. 

Still without any sense of motion on board, 
in sudden and unexpected silence, Stamboul now 
began to be lost to sight in the fog and dusk. 
All Turkey was disappearing, with a sort of 
funereal dignity, fading into the distance — and 
into the past. 

André did not cease from looking as long as 
a dim vision of Stamboul could be discerned, a 
darker grey in the grey of evening. To him on 
that side of the horizon a charm still dwelt of 
women’s souls and figures — those who but now 
went away in that carriage, and those others 
already sleeping in death. 


Nightfall on the sea of Marmora. André 
was thinking: ‘By this time they are at home 
again. And he pictured to himself their drive 
back, their arrival at the house under inquisitive 
eyes, and then their imprisonment, their loneliness 
this evening. 

The ship was not yet far away; that lighthouse 
just blazing out at a short distance was on 
Seraglio point. But André had already a sense 
of infinite remoteness; his departure had cut, as 
with the stroke of an axe, the threads which had 
bound the life of Turkey with the living hour; 
and then that time, really so recent, but now held 
by no tie, dropped away, falling, falling rapidly 
into the void where things absolutely past sink 
into nothingness. 


LIII 


On reaching France he received this note from 
Djenan: 


“When you were in our country, André, when 
we breathed the same air, it still seemed as though 
you belonged to us a little. But now you are lost 
to us; what concerns you, what surrounds you, is 
all unknown to us — and your heart, your diverted 
thoughts escape us more and more. You evade 
us — nay, rather it is we who are fading, soon to 
vanish completely. It is so frightfully sad! 

‘For a little while yet your book will keep us in 
your mind. But after that? I have a favour to 
ask you. You will send me as soon as possible 
the first pages in manuscript, will you not? I 
shall never part from them; wherever I go, even 
underground, they will be with me. How sad a 
thing is the real romance of that romance! It is 
now the only ground on which [ feel sure of 
meeting you; to-morrow it will be all that is left 
of a time now past for ever. DJENAN.’ 


André immediately sent her the sheets she had 
asked for. But he had no answer, not a line for 
367 


368 DISENCHANTED LI 


five weeks, when he received this letter from 


Zeyneb: 


Kassmm Pacua, 13th of Zilkada 1323. 


‘André, to-morrow morning our dear Djenan 
is to be taken to Stamboul to the house of Hamdi 
Bey for the second time, with all the ceremonial of 
a wedding. All has been settled strangely, quickly, 
every difficulty smoothed away. Both families 
combined to take steps for petitioning His Im- 
perial Majesty to annul the iradeh of separation; 
no one defended her. 

“Hamdi Bey has sent her to-day the most 
magnificent sheaves of roses from Nice; but 
they have not yet met, for she requested Emireh 
Hanum to beg him, as the only favour, to wait till 
after to-morrow’s ceremony. She has been loaded 
with flowers; if you could see her room — which 
you did see once — where she has had them all ar- 
ranged, you would think it an enchanted garden. 

‘I found her this evening quite amazingly 
calm, but it is, I feel, only weariness and resigna- 
tion. This morning, when it was wonderfully 
fine, she went out, | know, accompanied only by 
Kondjé Gul, to visit the graves of Melek and of 
your Nedjibeh, and went up the hill at Eyoub to 
that spot in the cemetery where my poor little 
sister photographed you side by side, do you 
remember? I wished to spend this last evening 
with her, as we did — Melek and I — on the eve of 
her former marriage; but I understood that she 
would rather be alone, so I left before nightfall, 
my heart aching with distress. 


LUI DISENCHANTED 369 


‘So here I am at home, indescribably forlorn; 
I feel she is more utterly lost than she was the 
first time, because Hamdi mistrusts my influence. 
I shall be kept away, I shall see her no more. 
I never believed, André, that such suffering was 
possible; if you could ever pray, I should say pray 
for me. But I will implore your pity, your great 
pity, for your poor friends, the two who remain. 

“ZEYNEB.’ 


‘Do not be afraid that she forgets you. On 
the 27th of Ramazan, the day of the dead, she 
settled that we should go together to the tomb 
of Nedjibeh to take her some flowers — and our 
prayers, all that is left to us of our lost faith. 
Though you have not had a letter from her for 
many days it is that she has been ill and wretched; 
but I know she intends to write you a long letter 


this evening before going to sleep. She told me 
so when I left her. Le 


LIV 


But the next day but one André received this 
written communication,’ in which, as he tore open 
the envelope, he fancied he recognised the hand 


of Djavideh Hanum: 
‘Allah! 
*Ferideh Azadeh Djenan, 


‘Daughter of Tewfik Pasha Darihan Zadeh, and 
of Ismet Hanum Kerissen, died to-day, the 14th 
of Zilkada 1323. 

‘She was born on the 22nd of Redjeb 1297, at 
Karadjemir. 

“By her desire she is buried in the turbeh of 
the venerable Sivassi of Eyoub, there to sleep her 
last. 

‘But her eyes, which were pure and beautiful, 
have already been opened, and God, who loved 
her, has directed their gaze towards the gardens of 
Paradise, where Mahomet, our Prophet, awaits the 


faithful. 


1 No printed announcement of death is sent out in Turkey. It is made 
known to friends at a distance by a notice in a newspaper or a written letter, 
always worded approximately as above. 


37° 


LIV DISENCHANTED 371 


‘All we who must die send up our prayers to 
you, O Djenan Ferideh Azadeh, and beseech you 
not to forget us in your appeal. And we, your 
humble friends, will follow in the path of light you 
have shown us. 

‘O Djenan Ferideh Azadeh, 
“May the rabmet of Allah descend on you. 


‘Kassm Pacna, 15th Zilkada 1323.’ 


He read it in haste and bewilderment; the 
oriental form of the communication was unfamiliar, 
and then all Djenan’s various names, which he did 
not know, at first misled him. Some few minutes 
passed before he finally and completely understood 
that it was she who was dead. 


LV 


A onc letter from Zeyneb arrived three days 
later, enclosing a sealed envelope on which his 
; es gRrey At Sim 

name ‘André’ was in Djenan’s writing still. 


ZEYNEB’S LETTER 


“André, all my sufferings, all my misery, were 
mere gladness so long as her smile shed its light 
on them; my blackest days were made bright by 
her: now I know it, now that she is no more. 

‘It is almost a week now since she was laid in 
the earth. Nevermore shall I see those deep grave 
eyes which her soul shone through, never again 
hear her voice, nor her child-like laugh; all willbe . 
dreary for me till the end. Dyjenan lies in the 
grave. I do not believe it yet, André, and yet I 
touched her little cold hands, I saw her rigid smile, 
her teeth of pearl between the marble lips. I was 
the first to go to her, and took the last letter 
she wrote, her letter to you, all twisted and 
crumpled in her fingers. I do not yet believe 
it, and yet I saw her pale and stiff, I held her 
dead hands in mine. I do not believe it! But 
it is true. I saw her, and I saw her coffin 
wrapped in a Valideh shawl with a green Mecca 

372 


LY DISENCHANTED 373 


veil, and I heard the Imam say the prayer for 
the dead — for her. 

‘On Thursday, the very day when we were to 
escort her back to Hamdi Bey, I received a note 
at daybreak with the key of her room — the key 
she was so delighted to have obtained, do you 
remember? It was Kondjé Gul who brought it, 
and why so early? I was terrified even as | 
opened the envelope. And I read: “Come; you 
will find mie dead. Come into my room first, and 
alone. Close to me look for a letter; hide it in 
your dress, and then send it to my friend.” 

‘I flew there, I went alone into her room. 
Oh! André, the horror of it; the horror of the 
first glance. Where would she be? In what 
shape? Fallen onthe floor? In bed? There, in 
her armchair, in front of her writing-table, her 
head fallen back, perfectly white, looking as if she 
saw the rising sun. And I was not to call, to cry 
out. No; the letter —I must find the letter. I[ 
saw five or six letters lying sealed on the table in 
front of her — letters of farewell, no doubt. But 
there were also some scattered sheets, and this 
envelope addressed to you. And the last sheet, 
which you will find all crumpled, I took out of her 
left hand, which clasped it tightly. I hid them all, 
and when I had done her bidding, I screamed as 
loud as I could, and they came in. 

‘Djenan, my only friend, my sister! There is 
nothing in the world now without her, after her; 
neither joy, nor affection, nor light of day! It is 
all gone with her into her grave, where before long 
a green slab will mark the place — over there — 


374 DISENCHANTED LY 


you know — at Eyoub which you both loved so 
well. 

“And she would be alive now if only she had 
still been the little barbarian, the little princess of 
the Asiatic plains. She would have known nothing 
of the emptiness of things. It was thinking too 
much, knowing too much, which poisoned her 
drop by drop, day by day. It is the West that 
has killed her, André. If she had been left 
ignorant, primitive, only lovely, I should see her 
by me now, and hear her voice. And my eyes 
would not have wept as they will still weep for 
her for many days and nights yet. I should not 
now be in despair, André, if she had remained the 
little princess of the Asiatic plains! ZEYNEB.’ 


André had a pious awe of opening Djenan’s 
letter. 

This was not like the formal announcement 
which he had opened unsuspectingly. He knew 
now; he had worn mourning for her for some 
days; the grief of having lost her had taken 
possession of him, slowly and deeply sinking into 
his soul; and he had had time, too, to reflect 
on his share of responsibility for this desperate 
blow. 

Before opening her letter he shut himself into 
a room alone, not to be disturbed by anything in 
this last téte-@-téte with her. 

There were several sheets; and the last, the 
bottom one, was, as his fingers felt it, crumpled 
and crushed. 

He saw at once that the writing was the same 


is DISENCHANTED 375 


as in all her letters, the same neat, clear hand. She 
was mistress of herself in the face of death. And 
she began with the balanced sentences which it 
was her manner to compose; phrases so calm that 
André could almost have doubted their finality, 
since he had not seen her stiff and white, had not 


held her dead hand. 
THE LETTER 


‘My friend, the hour of our parting has struck. 
The iradeh by which I believed myself protected 
has been annulled, as Zeyneb no doubt has told 
you. My grandmother and my uncles have made 
every arrangement for my marriage, and to-morrow 
I am to be handed over once more to the man — 
you know. 

“It is midnight, and in the silence of the 
sleeping house there is not a sound but that of 
my pen; nothing is awake except my misery. To 
me the world is blotted out; I have already taken 
leave of all I ever loved; I have written my last in- 
structions and my farewell letters. I have divested 
my soul of all that is not of its very essence, | 
have driven away every image — so that nothing 
may come between you and me, so that I may 
give to you alone the last hours of my life, and 
that you alone may feel the last dying throb of 
my heart. 

“Because, my friend, I mean to die. A quite 
peaceful death, like a deeper sleep, that will not 
disfigure my prettiness. Peace and forgetting are 
here, in a phial under my hand. It is an Arabian 


376 DISENCHANTED LV 


poison, very gentle and sure, which gives to death, 
they say, the semblance of love. 

“André, before departing from life, I have 
made a pilgrimage to the little tomb that is so 
dear to you. I went to pray there, and beseech 
her whom you loved to support me in the hour of 
death — and also to allow some memory of me to 
mingle with hers in your heart. And I have been 
to Eyoub too, alone with my old Kondjé Gul, to 
entreat my dead to welcome me. I wandered 
among the tombs, choosing where I would lie; 
then I rested, all alone, on the spot where we 
have sat together. The winter’s day was as mild 
as that April when in that same place I surrendered 
my soul. Over the Golden Horn, as I came 
home the sky was shedding roses. Ah! my be- 
loved city, so lovely in the evening glow — I shut 
my eyes to carry the vision with me into the 
next world. 

‘Zeyneb advised me to escape when the news 
came that the iradeh was annulled. But I could 
not make up my mind to it. Perhaps if I had 
been sure of finding under another sky some love 
to shelter me. But I had no right to hope for 
anything but tender pity. I prefer death. I am 
very tired. 

“A strange calm possesses me. I have had all 
the flowers sent to me for to-morrow’s féte brought 
into my room — my room as a girl which you once 
were in. I have arranged them round my bed, 
and on the table at which I am writing, and, my 
friend, I think of you. I can see you before me. 
You are my companion to-night. I shut my eyes 


LV DISENCHANTED a7 


and I see you, cold, motionless; but those eyes of 
yours — the eyes of which I shall never sound the 
mysteries — pierce my closed eyelids and scorch 
my heart. And when I open mine you are still 
there, your portrait looks at me from among the 
flowers. 

‘But your book — our book — excepting the 
pages you have given me, and which will go with 
me to-morrow — I am going away without having 
read it! [ shall never have known exactly what 
you think even. Have you really understood the 
sadness of life to us? Have you felt what a 
crime it is to rouse sleeping souls, and then crush 
them if they try to soar; what a shame it is to 
reduce women to the passiveness of mere chattels ? 
Tell them, André, that our lives are smothered 
in sand, are one long death. Oh, tell them this! 
Let my death at any rate be of use to my Moslem 
sisters. I would so gladly have been of use to 
them living. Once upon a time I cherished a 
dream of trying to arouse them all — but no! 
Sleep, sleep on, poor souls. Never discoverthat you 
have wings. But the others who have already 
taken flight, who have had a glimpse of a wider 
sphere than the harem, these, André, I confide to 
you; speak of them, and speak forthem. Be their 
advocate in the world where men and women 
think; and may their tears, may my anguish at 
this hour, touch the blinded tyrants who love us 
though they crush us.’ 


Here suddenly the writing changed, grew 
feebler, almost tremulous. 


378 DISENCHANTED LY 


“It is now three in the morning, and I must 
finish my letter. I have wept so much that I can 
hardly see. Oh! André, André, is it possible to 
be young and loving and yet be driven to die? 
Something clutches my throat, is strangling me. 
I had every right to live and be happy. A dream 
of life and light still hovers before me. But 
to-morrow, to-day’s sun even, is to fling me into 
the embracing arms of the master who is forced 
upon me, and where — where are the arms I could 
have loved ?’ 


Here there was a break indicating an interval 
of time. The last hesitation, no doubt, and then 
the doing of the irrevocable. For a few more 
lines the letter was in the old tranquil strain; but it 
was a tranquillity that made him shudder. 


‘It is done; it only needed a little courage; 
the phial of forgetting is empty. I am already a 
thing of the past. In an instant I had stepped out 
of life; I have only a bitter taste of flowers left on 
my lips. The world seems far away; everything 
is confused and vanishing — everything except the 
friend whom I loved, whom I am calling, who 
must stay with me till the end.’ 


And now the writing sloped across like that of 
a child; then, at the bottom of the next page, the 
lines crossed in every direction. The poor little 
hand was no longer firm and steady; the letters 
were too tiny or suddenly much too large, fright- 


fully large. This was the last sheet, which had 


LV DISENCHANTED 379 


been crushed and twisted in the last throes of 
death, and the crumpling of the paper made it 
more terrible to read. 


‘The friend I am calling, who must stay with 
me till the end. My beloved, come quickly. I 
want to tell you — Did you not know that I loved 
you with every fibre of my being? When one is 
dead one can confess all. ‘The rules of the world 
are then no more. Why, now I am going, shall I 
not tell you that [ have loved you? 

“André, that day when you sat here, in front of 
the table where I am writing to you in farewell, 
by chance, as I leaned forward, I touched you; I 
shut my eyes, and behind the closed lids what 
lovely visions flashed across. Your arms held me 
to your heart, and my hands, filled with love, 
gently touched your eyes and drove out all sadness. 
Ah! Death might have come then; and it would 
have come at the first moment when weariness 
came to you, but how sweet it would have seemed, 
what a joyful and grateful soul it would have carried 
away! Now, all is swimming; all is growing 
dim. . . . I was told I should sleep, but I am not 
yet sleepy, but everything is shifting; I see every- 
thing double; it is all in a whirl; my candles look 
like suns — the flowers are grown larger — larger; 
I am in a forest of gigantic flowers. 

“Come, André, come near me. What are you 
_ doing among the roses? Come close to me while 
I write. I want your arms round me, and your 
dear eyes near my lips. So, my love, that is how 
I want to sleep, close to you, telling you that I 


380 DISENCHANTED LV 


love you. Let me see your eyes close to me, for 
in this other life, where I am, souls can be read 
through the eyes. I am dead, André Is that 
a tear for me in your deep eyes that I could not 
understand? I do not hear your answer because 
I am dead That is why I am writing; you 
could not hear my voice; it is too far away. 

“I love you — do you at least hear that? I love 
you 











Oh, to feel this dying anguish in his very hand! 
To be the one to whom she persisted in speaking 
even at the last, at the moment of crowning 
mystery when the soul is released! ‘To possess the 
last trace of her tender thought, coming already 
from the realm of death! 


‘I am going, floating away, André; hold 














me | Will any one ever love you with such 
devoted love? This is sleep — the pen is so 
heavy In your arms dear love, dear 
love 





The ‘last words were hardly visible. But, in- 
deed, the reader could see no more, neither that 
nor anything else. On the page, all crumpled by 
the poor little hand which could no more, he 
piously and passionately pressed his lips — and 
this was their first and only kiss. 


LVI 


O Dyenan Fertpew AZADEH, may the rahmet ' of 
Allah rest upon thee! Peace to thy lofty white 
soul! And may thy sisters in Turkey at my call 
for some years yet, before all is forgotten, repeat 
thy dear name in their evening prayers. 


1 Rahmet: the crowning mercy of Allah, the forgiveness which wipes out 
all sin. In speaking of the dead the Turks say: ‘ Allah grant him rahmet,’ 
as we were wont to say: ‘ God rest his soul.’ 


381 





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